Richard E. Miller

On the End of Privacy tells the story of Tyler Clemente's final days before he updated his Facebook status to "jumping from the GW Bridge. sorry" and committed suicide. As I worked through all the online information about Tyler's life and the trial of his roommate for having used a webcam to spy on Tyler, I realized that this story was about more than technology, sex, and homophobia; it was about what it means for us all to now live in a world where anything we say or do can be recorded without our consent and shared with the world.

The book is written for a general reader. The best comment I received about the book, before COVID swallowed it whole, was, "It's a real page turner." It's also a cautionary tale: the more I looked into Tyler's story, the more I realized that some of the most basic facts about his life were regularly misrepresented by the press and in online discussions. In this way, Tyler's story poses the question: how do we know whether what we know is true or not?