"expectation of privacy" is one of those slippery terms where lawyers use it differently from the public, and this isn't immediately obvious. Historically, we

"expectation of privacy" is one of those slippery terms where lawyers use it differently from the public, and this isn't immediately obvious. Historically, we have expected that people can see us in public. However we have not had the expectation that: - that we are identifiable to people other than acquaintances - that we can be tracked by people not present, either at the time or later - and for someone to physically follow you to track your movements would fairly quickly lead to alarm and summoning the police to remove them. So no, other than lawyer's argot, we have always had a reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. Not absolute privacy, but privacy in the areas that matter to most of us.