Privacy at a Crossroads

Abstract

The right to privacy is at a crossroads. It was once the subject of intense theoretical disputations; a pragmatic turn thrust it into the spotlight of the most salient disputes about the regulation of technology, surveillance, and informational capitalism. Yet at the same time that privacy law’s reach has become vast, there is no agreement on whether and how it can actually provide the answers that society expects to the most pressing questions of our days. If anything, the agreement increasingly seems to be that it can’t. The most exciting paths now being chartered instead are perhaps best read as moving “beyond privacy” and towards “data governance”. This chapter tracks this trajectory of the right to privacy, focusing on informational privacy. It raises questions we might want to answer before abandoning it as an old toy and discusses potential problems and limitations for data governance.