What the Privacy Debate Gets Wrong

On January 13th, Benjamin Wittes and Emma Kohse released a new paper challenging the assumption that "privacy is an eroding value," worn away by the incessant collection of online data about consumer habits. Their paper, "The Privacy Paradox II: Measuring the Privacy Benefits of Privacy Threats," uses empirical data from Google consumer surveys to study how many people actually experience the technologies often accused of eroding privacy as increasing their privacy instead. 

In an event at the Brookings Institution, Ben sat down with Stewart Baker of Steptoe & Johnson and Amie Stepanovich of Access now to discuss the paper. This week, we're bringing you that conversation on the podcast. 

One note: Ben's opening remarks reference Powerpoint slides containing the survey results, which you can view in the paper itself—available here.