But don’t be fooled: The almost complete erosion of what we would have considered our private spaces at the beginning of this millennium is not entirely — nor even mainly — a result of the National Security Agency’s surveillance. While nobody should doubt that the government’s electronic spying is intrusive, we largely let online privacy slip away without any assistance from security agencies.

Each step along the way was, for the most part, understandable and reasonable rather than nefarious. But the fact is that privacy in the United States is not what it used to be, and until we realize that, our debate about electronic privacy — Manichean as it is, and focused almost exclusively on the relationship between the government and its citizens — will fail to resurrect its value.

Four distinct factors have interacted to kill electronic privacy: a legal framework that has remained largely static since the 1970s; significant changes in our use of rapidly evolving technology; commercial providers’ increasingly intrusive tracking of our every online habit; and a growth in non-state threats that has made governments the world over obsess about uncovering these dangers.

Only by understanding the interaction among these factors can we begin the necessary discussion about what privacy means in the 21st century — and how to forge a new social compact to address the issue.

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