One of the main problems with privacy today is that your rights to privacy are typically enumerated in lengthy terms of service or user agreements that can and do change without notice. If these documents truly do enumerate "rights" they shouldn't be so easily changed whenever the company finds it convenient or profitable. What you initially agreed to was a 20 page document written in legalese that few will bother to read through.
If you truly want to be informed and up to date on your privacy rights for all of the services you use, you basically have to make it a full time job. It's not a sustainable system. What we need is some sort of societally accepted norms, and possibly laws, regarding privacy so that you don't have to hire a lawyer to give you a monthly update explaining what Facebook can and can't do with the data you and your friends provide them.
My point is that whatever norms or laws that result from those considerations will be arbitrary unless they are based firmly on a respect for an individual's human right to privacy.
It seems to me that we do have "societally accepted norms, and possibly laws, regarding privacy." The norms/laws are that the information you share freely with Google/FB/Verizon/etc can be passed along to the gov't in support of national security.
These norms/laws aren't arbitrary, they're based on the views of the majority of the citizens of this country, expressed through the democratic process.
One of the main problems with privacy today is that your rights to privacy are typically enumerated in lengthy terms of service or user agreements that can and do change without notice. If these documents truly do enumerate "rights" they shouldn't be so easily changed whenever the company finds it convenient or profitable. What you initially agreed to was a 20 page document written in legalese that few will bother to read through.
If you truly want to be informed and up to date on your privacy rights for all of the services you use, you basically have to make it a full time job. It's not a sustainable system. What we need is some sort of societally accepted norms, and possibly laws, regarding privacy so that you don't have to hire a lawyer to give you a monthly update explaining what Facebook can and can't do with the data you and your friends provide them.
My point is that whatever norms or laws that result from those considerations will be arbitrary unless they are based firmly on a respect for an individual's human right to privacy.