What is your expectation of privacy in a digital world? The notion of collective intelligence is gaining traction and currency in our digital world. However, the underlying unstated assumption in this story is that men are basically 'good' and not 'evil.' If you believe that collective intellgence somehow transcends the evil lurking in the world, you have an unrealistic worldview. On the other hand, if mankind was inherently 'good,' there'd be no need for the notion of privacy?
"...These kinds of things transcend party lines. Congress doesn’t use the internet and doesn’t understand the Internet the way our generation does, and by extension, they don’t understand the power of collective intelligence. It has nothing to do with how capable or intelligent our congressmen and women are — it’s a simple function of how they grew up understanding information, technology, and privacy.
The past 15 years have arguably seen more change in those three aspects of society than the half-century before. Trusting these people to regulate something they don’t, and cannot understand, like digital privacy, is a risky road to go down."
And this...
"The ease with which a thief can steal your identity is a largely a function of how much information it is “normal” to divulge. So while you may have been shocked if a stranger approached you in 1994 and told you your birthday, hometown, high school, and favorite movie, it would be thoroughly unremarkable in 2009.
Privacy may very well be something wholly temporary, and that’s not a bad thing. The sooner we stop trying to impose 20th century standards of privacy on 21st century technologies like collective intelligence, the better."
