Experts Are Divided on the Future of Privacy

Are privacy and personal data rights “dead” in the digital age or merely in transition? More than 2,500 technology experts and analysts were nearly evenly divided when they were asked the question, “Will policy makers and technology innovators create a secure, popularly accepted and trusted privacy-rights infrastructure by 2025?” Fifty-five percent of the experts invited to respond to this query by the Pew Research Center and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center answered “no,” and 45 percent answered “yes.”

“The citizens will divide between those who prefer convenience and those who prefer privacy,” said Niels Ole Finnemann, a professor and director of Netlab, DigHumLab in Denmark.

What else did the experts have to say? Read the full quotes and responses from many more experts in the full report, or browse through a selection of highlights.