"The scale of information sharing being proposed is unprecedented, the scope of the new powers conferred by the act is excessive, particularly as these powers affect ordinary Canadians, and the safeguards protecting against unreasonable loss of privacy are seriously deficient," declared Daniel Therrien, Privacy Commisioner of Canada, in a typical statement.
The following month, Zuckerberg declared that privacy was an evolving "social norm".
Four years ago, Zuckerberg declared that privacy was no longer a "social norm," as though saying it would make it true.
My friend and colleague Bruce Schneier wrote a column last week (See "Google And Facebook's Privacy Illusion") stating that a lot of major tech companies are declaring online privacy dead.
(Of course we've seen similarly grand social conditioning efforts from other hugely ambitious tech companies also on a mission to re-engineer social behavior to mould it to better fit their business model — Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg declaring that privacy is no longer a "social norm" springs most readily to mind. Privacy dead? Uh, no chance).
Extraordinarily, the prime minister, David Cameron, waded into this debate by declaring that privacy laws should be decided in parliament rather than by judges and raised yet again his hobby horse about the need for a British bill of rights to supplant the ECHR.
Two hundred eleven (211) physicians agreed to participate: 105 male, 94 female, 12 did not declare gender (privacy was guaranteed in spite of the face-to-face nature of the survey).
Violation of privacy, he declared.
"Do you know there's no word in Greek for privacy?" she declared.
Graph Search makes the obscure nonobscure, which is why the Web site GigaOM, after playing with the tool, quickly declared "the end of privacy by obscurity".
