Privacy? Is it possible?

Ubiquitous cameras and global communications combined with ultra-fast computers will shortly be able to pull up everything you've said or done that wasn't hidden perfectly.

Most public space in the civilized world has not only stationary cameras but thousands of phone cameras. Hidden cameras with battery and recorder for video hidden in a cigarette lighter can be purchased from China by anyone with enoughh money to eat a meal at a fast-food restaurant--not top-of-the-line ultra-miniature stuff by any means--consider that this is consumer equipment and you know that gov'ts have equipment at least 3 orders of magnitude smaller 40mm > 0,4mm length.

What stopped Big Brother 60 years ago was the need to have humans to monitor each other--which leads to an unafordable cost.

Cheap computing makes it possible to handle, evaluate, store all data and send only the things that evaluated as 'of interest.'

Privacy is nearly impossible outside your own head.

The big question boils down to: Do we turn access to all of this off to some centralized authority(ies)? Or do we allow everyone access to it all.

The biggest problems with privacy come not with individual rights, but with the ability of some to know all and keep others ignorant--tyranny is the usual result of secrecy (privacy.)

We have literally millions of laws on this planet, most of which are ignored or written to be circumvented. This happens away from the public eye. Open the public eye and society will be forced to determine which rules are important and enforceable and which are not.

The risk is in allowing those in control to continue to hide their activities is far greater than the risk that those in power will use that power to cement their own power.

Note that a society in which everyone agrees not to perform certain acts never creates laws against them. Such laws only arise in places where those acts do occur, and which some power block finds unacceptable.

Honest men seldom brag about their honesty--it never occurs to them that others aren't like themselves.

Dishonesty becomes profitable only when being detected has only a local effect which can be negated by changing location.

If you live in a small village, everyone knows who is trustworthy and to what degree--get out of line too far and people will refuse to deal with you. Within a huge population base, the news won't get to everyone (though the Net is changing that.) Since only a minuscule percentage of any huge population need be cheated (or a huge population cheated to a tiny degree each,) in order to thrive, criminal operators don't need to worry about reputation.

Robbing only one small bank of everything will support you for many years--and can be done in minutes via Net (though as with most large operations, preparation may take considerably longer.)

While the only observations over much of the planet are space-based and interested in only a tiny subset of activity, nothing precludes their use for other purposes...you can find private spaces. but guaranteeing that they are private is much, much harder. In cities, where the bulk of the population with the ability to effect major changes live, it is much, much harder to even find a place--and with the eyes watching, and recording, it is not difficult to find out where you are meeting after the fact. With current equipment "persons of interest" can be tracked and recorded quite easily unless stringent measures are taken.

The other aspect is timeliness. There are many places where advance notice of even a minute or less can make millions.

Information often has an associated time frame in which it has value--and may have no value or even reverse value after that time.