Privacy may be an anomaly, says Google's Internet evangelist Vint Cerf

Vint Cerf, known as one of the “fathers of the Internet” believes that privacy is something fairly new and wasn’t even guaranteed decades...

Naina Khedekar|Nov 21, 2013, 12:49:35 IST

Vint Cerf, known as one of the “fathers of the Internet” believes that privacy is something fairly new and wasn’t even guaranteed decades ago. He currently works as the chief Internet evangelist at Google. Speaking at a Federal Trade Commission event, he said that privacy may actually be an anomaly. Cerf believes that privacy isn’t an inherent part of society that's been stripped away by new technology, rather technology has actually created it in the first place.

The Registerreports further from Cerf's talk where he warned that privacy will be increasingly difficult to achieve and most of the fault lies with us. Though he showed concerns over NSA surveillance, he reportedly appeared to be interested primarily in privacy as it relates to social networks like Facebook. “Our social behavior is quite damaging to privacy. Technology has outraced our social intellect,” Cerf said.

We are partially responsible for invasion of privacy (Image Source)

We are partially responsible for invasion of privacy (Source)

In the digital age, it will be impossible to achieve privacy because of the oversharing via social networks. For instance, he talked about how people can easily be exposed of doing something they wanted to keep a secret simply by being tagged in the background of a stranger's photo. “There's need to develop social conventions that are more respectful of people’s privacy," he says.