Keizer seems less worried about government than corporate intrusion into our personal lives—1.3 million requests by the government for cell phone records of citizens is less a concern than Google targeting ads to keywords found in our Gmail accounts. Indeed, he links distrust of government to the overall decline in privacy: “What is far more significant is the way in which e-mail represents a simultaneous rejection of both privacy and public institutions, no big surprise to anyone conscious of their interdependence.”

Those who lived under the Stasi might have something to say about the “interdependence” of privacy and massive public institutions, but no matter. Suffice it to say that there are far worse things in the world than the proliferation of microtargeted advertisements.

Sonny Bunch is managing editor of the Washington Free Beacon.