Privacy - if you're not paranoid you're not paying attention!

Security & Privacy are two very separate almost opposing disciplines. Some of my colleagues are very privacy aware. I really haven't paid enough attention to privacy and am having a bit of an awakening at the moment and thinking more about it.

There are some major challenges with preserving privacy. If governments allow privacy for all, then criminals will have the ability to plan and commit crimes undetected by law enforcement. Does it all come down to judicial oversight?

I welcome your comments to enlighten me of significant incidents and issues that impact on an individuals right to privacy.

Some examples include:

Printer manufacturers embedding codes into printed materials - perhaps this was done to satisfy legislators worried about forgery of currency. A better solution is to prevent printers from copying currency by embedding a code into the currency

RFID chips in passports - These chips can be read at very long distances. Chris Paget illustrates
He got a read from 66m with easily accessible hardware.

Apple recording GPS location history in Iphone - so a large company is recording history of your GPS location by default on a fairly insecure platform that can easily be hacked.

Google recording location of Wireless Access Points, wireless clients via Street View Cars - At one stage Google could be queried for the MAC address of your mobile phone and if a street view car had picked it up its location could be identified (perhaps your home or work address).

If five years ago I would have warned of giant corporations and government tracking your location with hidden codes and chips in documents and wireless signals people would have called me a paranoid schizophrenic!