Here is a fun fact: The right to privacy does not appear anywhere in the United States constitution nor has it ever been guaranteed by law. America's laws are based primarily on autonomy and property--what this means (among other things) is that if I can see it, hear it, or smell it from public property, than it belongs as much to me (or anyone else) as it does to you. This principle of ownership extends to everything from distributing fliers with your name, telephone number, and address on them to handing out photographs taken from the sidewalk of you changing clothes in front of your bedroom window. Spooky, no?
You might say something like:
"But even the government isn't allowed to spy on us without a warrant, this surely implies a right to privacy."
To which I would respond, "The government is certainly allowed to spy on you without a warrant, spying on citizens from park-benches, cars, and through video surveillance is the fundamental basis of police-work."
At this point you might choose to refine your statement, "The government cannot unduly invade our privacy, it cannot tap our telephones or sift through our computer files/emails without a warrant."
And I would answer thus, "Though the government was once constrained as you describe, it was always based upon constitutional protections from illegal search and seizure, and not a matter of privacy. Furthermore, the 4th Amendment from which such protections stemmed was creatively maimed in the supreme court throughout Reagan's presidency (after which in most cases a refusal of consent to be searched legally constituted 'probable cause' to be searched) and then completely annihilated by George W. Bush's Homeland Security Act, which granted the government virtually unlimited power to read private emails, eavesdrop on private messaging/telephone conversations, and to conduct blanket sweeps monitoring all electronic communications in the country. You have no right to privacy."
With the advent of the internet, this already complicated and poorly understood issue of privacy became increasingly muddled--if I can see it from my own property, from my own living-room, the law must doubly support my right to possess, reproduce, and distribute it--so long as it isn't copyrighted material; I don't mean to harp on this point, but context is everything and one's understanding of this issue and the world at large will benefit from bearing in mind that unlike the civil liberties of the past, property rights are alive and well.
It is worth noting that the government is not so gung-ho in its position (or lack thereof)when private citizens are doing the snooping and it is being targeted. A brief overview of what happens when the Federales are forced to swallow their own bitter medicine can be found here: http://reticentinformation.blogspot.com/2011/02/loose-lips-and-sunken-ships.html
Now anybody can stream nearly unlimited information about anyone from anywhere in the world. Even so, many people believe that their personal information is secure, that worrying about hackers is the sole province of conspiracy theorists and paranoid malcontents. They might be right about the paranoia, but consider that I am the opposite of a hacker (A.K.A., the most computer illiterate person I know)and in 5 minutes of online blundering, I can garner my Library Orientation instructor's:
Middle initial (http://www.mylife.com/caitlinbagley)
Email address, work number, work address, photograph (http://libguides.murraystate.edu/profile.php?uid=28597),
Links to various family members/friends facebook profiles/personal information, which in turn lead to more such links with widely varying levels of security (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000726390810#!/caitbagley)
Academic contacts in both Murray and Bloomington Indiana (http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/caitlin-bagley/contacts/)
Tenure as Indiana University's student chapter president of the American Library Association (http://iuala.org/contact-us/36-executives/5-caitlin.html)
As I'm simply a student making a point and not an identity thief, hacker, government agent, or fixated psycho, I didn't take this exercise any further than the first page of Google results and a simple Facebook search. But imagine if you will, someone with more technical know-how, motivation, and/or sinister leanings devoting much more than 5 minutes to a similar project, and you might begin to understand the anxiety that some people feel about their digital information.
Let's get down to brass tacks: The only sure way to protect your digital information is to refrain from having any.
Believe it or not, there's no rule that says you have to have an account with Facebook or any other social network. If you do have a Facebook account or email address, there is nothing that can force you to register with your real name, post accurate personal information, or upload photographs of yourself. If (like myself) you do upload accurate personal information/photos to Facebook/email accounts, there are generally privacy settings which serve to make information more difficult to access.
Here is a much better blog than mine on the subject: http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-947327.html
