To Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet law at Harvard…there is so much information out there. Supply creates demand, he argues.

via Link by Link – As Data Collecting Grows, Privacy Erodes – NYTimes.com.

Take the case of A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez), a baseball player who believed he was just a number and thus anonymous when he was tested by steroids. The list of names of those tested was never supposed to be matched with the test results, but the data was out there, and the Feds had a demand for it.

A “surveillance business model” is what  Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says is part of the problem.  The EFF told Noam Cohen of the NYTimes that  “online service providers — social networks, search engines, blogs and the like — should voluntarily destroy what they collect, to avoid the kind of legal controversies the baseball players’ union is now facing.”

This is a problem that no one wants to face head-on, but is building into a real headache with the introduction of the new driver’s licences and ARPHIDs in U.S. passports.

Related:

Your mobile carrier will sell you for pennies