There are two big news items about privacy today. The first is that the new coalition government in the UK is going to do away with systems that would collect masses of data about its citizens. The other is concerns directed at Google for its face recognition software that some fear would make stalking and surveillance too easy.
There's also the dichotomy here of information that governments hold versus what is available publicly on the internet. The British government is far more meddlesome that most and a correction is certainly warranted. I hope this is indicative of a trend away from big government data bases of personal information.
Over dinner last night, we were discussing the future of privacy. What will it look like in 20-30 years when the Facebook generation, people who have grown up putting their every movement, thought and picture into the public eye, are making the rules. For them, sharing masses of information is the norm. Given that fundamentally new baseline expectation, what will privacy look like. Either, privacy will continue to erode, or there will be some event which triggers a massive backlash against sharing private information. I think the first is more likely.
