Privacy

Next month I'll be speaking in DC at the Int'l Assoc. of Privacy Professionals.  I've participated a bit in privacy debates -- in particular, with interest in how the tools of digital rights management to control intellectual property could be applied to safeguard individual privacy -- but the overall field seems to me to be in stalemate right now.  Individuals say they want privacy, but they act in ways that signal otherwise, happy to agree to personal data collection in exchange for a discount at the supermarket.  The public has a sort of defeatism about it -- there's an assumption that everything is watched, but that not much can be done about it.

For privacy professionals -- most typically people at private firms whose job is to monitor and enforce compliance with privacy regulations, to avoid PR disasters, and perhaps to be a sort of ombuds for those whose data is gathered -- I wonder how this shakes out.  Are they looked at with the same skepticism that an in-house legal team can be viewed, seen as not producing anything material to the firm's bottom line, but able to cause trouble or try to say no to some idea that everyone else likes?

I'd love to know what others think, especially libertarians who I imagine both recoil at gov't restrictions on speech -- one way of describing privacy law -- and who also value individual choice and freedom, which an invasion of privacy can trim back, whether conducted by public or private authorities.