Privacy as we knew it is gone, and no amount of legislation will change that–not for nations, corporations or individuals. It’s sort of like outlawing hammers in a kingdom of nails.  And it was all done out in the open. We agreed to it, at least tacitly.

The opening of “Privacy Isn’t a Right,” Josh Klein’s Slate essay about the way it is now:

“Privacy isn’t your right anymore. We sold it for pictures of cats and the ability to tell anyone in the free world what we had for breakfast.

I’m not saying it was a bad trade, either. The Internet as we know it came about through the monetization of metadata—information about us—instead of by replicating traditional models of content sales. As a result the Internet exploded into a plethora of useful services and platforms of every shape, size, and description. What’s more, it was a great leveler—nobody had more valuable personal information than anybody else, so everyone was able to trade it in for the same kinds of services. 

The problem with all this is that ‘privacy’ as a notion was abdicated the instant you clicked ‘agree’ to the online services agreement you didn’t read. And yet most consumers haven’t yet realized that their date has left the restaurant and they’re stuck with the bill.”