Neil Richards

“Without privacy—without a space between our political selves and the always-on notification pings of surveillance-based media—we may never have the time or capacity to think critically about the direction in which our world is heading. What we do read is likely to be shaped by what advertisers desire rather than what advances thoughtful, rational, and ethical democratic decision-making. Paradoxically, we may be nudged and herded into increasingly polarized but profitable “filter bubbles” while being deprived of the social and intellectual habits of mind to look at the big picture and think for ourselves.”
― Neil Richards, Why Privacy Matters

“Instead, it is that innovation rhetoric frequently deploys “innovation” as if it were a fundamental right, using the same argumentative structure as First Amendment or other civil liberties claims. (To be clear, “innovation” is not such a fundamental right.) This is particularly ironic in the privacy context, where fears of “stifling innovation” are commonly and frequently used to resist any attempts to protect privacy, an actual fundamental right protected not just by European law but by American law as well.”
― Neil Richards, Why Privacy Matters