When a new technology comes out, people are generally good at seeing through the hype that is associated with it. However, people are often bad about seeing through the outsized claims from another type of clever marketer: professional privacy advocates who routinely say new technologies spell doom to the privacy of those who use them. When privacy advocates merely scare consumers away from innovation rather than working to create sensible solutions for integrating useful new technologies into society, they slow the pace of economic and social progress, writes Alan McQuinn in Tech Crunch.