Due Diligence: Pondering Privacy

Tim Oren at Due Diligence is pondering privacy and has some interesting observations, particularly his "hierarchy of unease":

Due Diligence: Pondering Privacy:

"... I haven't seen a domain with more zealots since the early crypto market. There are zealous marketers sure they can make their customers more loyal and profitable if only can pool all the known data about them. There are privacy zealots, who often don't seem to believe in marketing at all - or maybe even markets. And there are zealous computer scientists and security experts, sure the whole matter can be resolved with the right algorithms. And now that the press and politicians are coming to the party, we can expect the discourse to become even more informative...."

The "hierarchy of unease", which he discusses in his blog posting, is a categorization of the sorts of privacy issues that individuals fear, in order of severity:

1. Direct Financial Loss, or Threat of Same
2. Intrusion
3. Compartment Breach
4. Loss of Information Asymmetry
5. Everything Else