Vint Cerf, acknowledged as one of (perhaps the) father of the Internet, spoke about privacy last week and made some very good points. He was speaking in the context of the Internet of Things, a developing phenomenon under which the coverage of the internet is growing to include the tracking and management of many objects, such as inventories and refrigerator contents.
He pointed out that as internet usage expands, privacy is going to take a beating. More importantly, he pointed out that privacy is a product of urbanization and the industrial revolution; that in small towns, privacy does not exist. A good point. It exists to some extent, but anyone who lives in a small town can tell you that it is much more limited than it is in big cities. Your neighbours know much more about you and what you are doing.
The internet is changing the nature of big city life by making it, in a sociological sense, more like a small town. That's because people willingly put so much of their life out there on social media. That will expand as the internet of things grows.
That means a maintenance of privacy will require a change in behaviour, not stronger laws. Another point that Mr. Cerf made. Here's a write-up on his talk.
It's quite possible that no amount of behaviour change will preserve the post industrial level of privacy. Welcome to the technological small town, or as Marshall McLuhan would have put it - The Global Village.
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