I'll provide a quick TL;DR as the paper is somewhat lengthy but I think the message is worth discussing:<p>Much of what privacy advocates focus on in terms of privacy violations on the internet neglect to take into account privacy gains from those same technologies. A key factor to this is focusing on what information is being shared but neglecting to account who it is being shared with and the privacy benefits associated with interacting with that service instead of traditional alternatives. For example, Google can see every search a person conducts regarding their sexual preferences. However, a closeted homosexual might turn to Google to find social and support groups because they're afraid of judgement from their family and peers. Groups like the EFF would say that buying a book through a Kindle is awful for the privacy of the reader because Amazon tracks the fact that you specifically bought the book and can see when you're reading it and even what page you're on - but most readers don't care that Amazon knows they're reading 50 Shades of Grey; they'd rather that everyone else on the subway just sees them reading their Kindle instead of an erotic novel paperback.<p>In general, people are more afraid of having their sensitive personal details disclosed to the people they interact with in person - their families, friends, coworkers or even the checkout lady at the pharmacy. The loss of privacy to a remote party like Google is worth the net gain in privacy to avoid disclosing embarrassing information to people they are more concerned with. This is also dependent on the type information being disclosed - the set of information that you'd want to keep from your friends is not the same set that you'd want to keep from your spouse, which is not the same as what you'd keep from your coworkers, which is not the same as what you'd hide from the police.<p>For those that would prefer an audio version, Ben Wittes gives a good discussion of it on the Lawfare Podcast at <a href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/lawfare/Episode_129.mp3" rel="nofollow">http://traffic.libsyn.com/lawfare/Episode_129.mp3</a>
>> But nearly every male, and more than a few women, who went through puberty in the pre-Internet age will smile in memory of some variation of Allen’s humiliation. If you didn’t go to the magazine store yourself to purchase girly magazines, you asked an older brother, cousin, or friend.<p>I am of the right gender and generation, but not a consumer. I am fed up with the trope that <i>pretty much everyone</i> uses or has used pornography. Not trying to demonstrate something worthy about myself (good luck to porn users). Rather, I dislike being defaulted into groups where I don't actually belong. And suspect that I am in less of a minority than some would have us believe. Perhaps non-consumers of porn really are such a big outlier, I've never checked the stats. However, I am aware that people who use this trope may incorrectly and infuriatingly discount such protestations with a wink and a nudge.
I'm concerned what could happen in the future, if large corporations have stored a lot of data. I was surprised how much civil liberties got eroded in the US after 9/11. What if there are more big terrorist attacks, for example, and say the military takes over the government? Do you really want some central database of all the books you've ever read then?