Well, in terms of economic theory, he has a point. Markets usually don't take into account so-called externalities such as the environmental impacts of pollutio

Well, in terms of economic theory, he has a point. Markets usually don't take into account so-called externalities such as the environmental impacts of pollution (or individual loss of privacy) when setting prices. Perhaps a better way to view environmental (or data-protection) legistation is not as constraining the untrammelled workings of the free market, but as modifying the market mechanisms themselves to take certain externalities into account, so that they get factored into production costs instead of being passed on to society.