Adding a question, does the government even have the power to erect those barriers? Or do we need to be thinking more in terms of consumers demanding things of companies directly while we appeal to government? I think government moves too slowly to react the tools on the market, consumers might be the only functional vanguard for their own rights. Yet I hope government can have a role, just remain skeptical of governments' functional power over digital tools.

Respect is key. So far digital communications have been treated with no respect by companies who mine them for insight and governments who can survey them all with ease. The ease of gathering digital messages to read has seemed to destroy respect. If we make the messages harder to read, will that bring back respect? It might make it more costly, but I don't think the respect will be there. That's what needs to be addressed, the lack of respect for the sanctity of messages sent with digital tools.

Good point. I think the issue comes into that now surveillance can enjoy network effects and is on the Moore's curve of capability. It has become absurdly easy to gather all the communications flowing on the network. Snail mail required a targeted effort, a direct desire to read a few letters. New abilities to tap the Internet see this targeting challenged. Now the risk becomes that it is possible to read everything and then determine what to target. It starts to shift "innocent until proven guilty" toward "let's find out who might be guilty." Even if one ignores the innocent, still there is a difference in the relationship.

I think that you are right that digital privacy is dead, the issue here is that we killed it without reading the fine print.

It is a trade-off yes, but it is much more insidious than it appears. While you get useful services, you are still in a much less powerful relationship than in a traditional subscription or market model. When you enter into an agreement with companies such as Google or Facebook you have become product. "Free" is a lie, you are paying by becoming product.

This is not particularly free or empowering, it's almost downright feudal.

Plus the observation that one cannot opt out of the network speaks to the radically shifted power dynamic at play; you either play inside the system or you don't play at all. Perhaps not Orwellian in that Orwell wrote of a singular government rather than a collection of companies and governments.

If digital activities are "public" then it follows that whatever becomes digitally mediated or has a digital wrapper then becomes "public." So the smart fridge and smart coffee maker makes your kitchen public. The smart TV makes your living room public. Again, opting out of that might be possible for now by not buying networked devices, but networked computers are being placed in everything; if we are not vigilant it may become impossible to buy a new appliance, car or even clothes that arenot networked and thus "public."

I agree with the idea of a framework for demanding accountability, but caution that it requires far more radical transparency than trusting self-reported data from companies and solving individual tracking schemes. Google's reports must be taken on their word; a good first step but hardly a guarantee against truly insidious behavior.

As well there's an arms race afoot to continue harnessing the benefits of tracking, precisely because the users being tracked are the product; one can't lose track of the product! Too much money is at stake and too many clever people exist. Cookies have long been devalued as a tracking tool precisely because they have been rebalanced in users' favor. For example, I referenced below work that uses tiny imperfections in Microelectromechanical systems (MEMs) such as gyroscopes, accelerometers, RFID tags and others as the latest example of this arms race.

You are right to look for frameworks on how to keep entities accountable, I just think we need to think more pervasive, more toward demanding new relationships with companies and the data we generate inside the platforms we use. Rebalancing power will take work on each of our parts and a broader cultural shift in understanding. We will have to demand a fairer bargain than simply accepting the terms and conditions by which the current version of "free" is enacted. We need to rethink the entire relationship. Still though privacy as we have known it won't survive these ongoing negotiations.

Good point bringing up the reputation cleaning services. Raises a big question I think: is privacy becoming a luxury good?

Certainly appears that way today. Yet we wee no guarantees of "privacy" even if ime shells out the cash to try and protect it.

Right to be forgotten seems problematic to implement, not to meantion potentially deleterious on broader historical records. I understand the intent, but still right to be forgotten seems like treading water as opposed to a sustainable solution. It doesn't address the culturl element of shame and the exposed self. Plus technically it only removes links, not the data. Might make it more obscure, but does not remove it. Another search engine could simply index it. Most pressingly though, what government or organization actually has the power to enforce the right to be forgotten? You mention EU, but their power is constrained. Even if they manage to tie Google down, if the listings begin to be de-indexed en masse an alternative search engine could emerge and require new regulation, with a lag time in reaction. I'm concerned that in a functional sense "right to be forgotten" is a pipe dream. Welcome comments though.

Western post-industrial society has broadly defined privacy as "the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people," and "the state of being free from public attention." Or, in even more elegant terms: "the right to be let alone" as Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis wrote in 1890.

Yet, we are seeing the capabilities of digital technology make this definition increasingly unrealistic to achieve in reality. The Internet is permeating ever more aspects of daily life. Physical and virtual realities are merging together and we are seeing the characteristics of the virtual, including pervasive surveillance, being applied to the physical. To escape the light is becoming impossible. With cameras everywhere from mobile phones to nanosat mesh networks, sensors proliferating, chattering machine to machine networks and increasingly powerful processing analyzing it all, we seem to be entering into a new era, one where every object, person and action is quantifiable and trackable, perhaps even predictable. With all of it on an exponential curve up in capability and down in size and price. We are increasingly living on Quantified Earth. Privacy as we have known appears dead. Facing its death, we must ask: should we fight to hold on to the privacy we knew, or plunge headlong into radical transparency?

Could we even return to the post-industrial definition, or must we begin to look for a "post-Internet" definition?

I argue that the wave of technological change is making the choice for us, that we are heading with overwhelming momentum toward radical transparency. I contend that trying to hang on to past definitions of privacy in its minutia risks diverting us away from focusing on future power dynamics, core rights and freedoms.

Lastly I ask is it time to let go of the "right to be let alone" and start thinking more along the lines of "the rights to be expressive and tolerated?"