The Emergence of a Right to Privacy

In November 2013, Google’s chief internet evangelist created a media stir when he argued that “privacy may actually be an anomaly.” Responding to worries about the internet goliath’s misappropriation of personal emails and other digital self-expressions, Vint Cerf said that our expectations of privacy are but a recent fad. Privacy has not been eroded by new technologies, he claimed; new technologies actually created the demand for privacy. In the small town of old, “where the postmaster saw who everyone was getting mail from,” the right to privacy was never a concern. ¹