If you’re still holding out hope for the preservation of “Internet privacy,” you may need to adjust your ideals a bit. The future of online privacy is cloudy, and policymakers and technology innovators have a weighty task on their hands – one they’re likely to fumble. This is one of the overarching findings of a recent canvassing of more than 2,500 experts by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.
As the boundaries between privacy and public information blur, policymakers and technology innovators will struggle to respond, according to a Pew Research Center study on the future of privacy released Thursday. A survey of experts responded with a split opinion on whether politicians and the tech industry could create a “secure, popularly accepted, and trusted privacy-rights infrastructure by 2025 that allows for business innovation and monetization” while offering people accessible options for protecting their personal information. About 55% of the 2,511 respondents said they did not believe an accepted privacy-rights infrastructure would exist in the next decade, while 45% said it would. But regardless of their thoughts on the future of privacy, many agreed that online life is public by nature.