The security vs. privacy debate is already over, and privacy lost

Published March 10, 2014 4:00am ET



When Edward Snowden leaked massive troves of information about the National Security Agency‘s collection of electronic information, he started a debate over the tradeoffs between security and privacy. At least that’s how President Obama framed it, arguing, “we have to make some important decisions about how to protect ourselves and sustain our leadership in the world, while upholding the civil liberties and privacy protections that our ideals and our Constitution require.”

Unfortunately, the security vs. privacy debate is largely over. As cybertechnologies pervaded our daily lives, we surrendered privacy, usually voluntarily. Consequently, framing the decisions before us as a contest between privacy and security is misguided; privacy died with the information age.

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