The Economist: Surveillance is a fact of life, so make privacy a human right

The Economist: Surveillance is a fact of life, so make privacy a human right by K.N.C.:

ONE OF the toughest questions of modern life is where to draw the bounds of privacy—and privacy law. Digital technologies make a virtue of sharing. At the same time, the ability of governments and companies to keep people’s activities under surveillance has never been greater. Slick artificial-intelligence algorithms depend on data, and creeping authoritarianism around the world means that the collection of vast quantities of data may be a recipe for disaster.

A historical perspective on privacy in America is provided by “None of Your Damn Business: Privacy in the United States from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age” (University of Chicago Press, 2019) by Lawrence Cappello, a professor of constitutional history at the University of Alabama. He notes that America was founded partly in rebellion against the privacy-violating British, so the debate over surveillance is as old as the country itself. The laws have always lagged behind the technology.