mouseover: "2031: Google defends the swiveling roof-mounted scanning electron microscopes on its Street View cars, saying they 'don't reveal anything that couldn't be seen by any pedestrian scanning your house with an electron microscope.'"
I thought this comic was particularly interesting, since in many ways it seems like privacy is a diminishing concern in the United States. This article by CNN questions whether 20 years from now, anyone will care about online privacy at all. Because many of the most popular websites are offered for free and paid through by advertising, the author suggests that within our lifetimes privacy is likely to become a thing of the past. Indeed, a few years ago, Mark Zuckerberg even publicly announced that he believes privacy is no longer a social norm. From that point of view, the proposition that people would object to xkcd's imagined Google Earth of 2031 is questionable.
Still, I'm not convinced that society will let privacy go without a fight. Recently, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia stated that he will be introducing legislation this year to force advertisers to honor "Do Not Track" requests. Similarly, the White House released a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights in February of this year. While this document does not have any legal effect at the moment, it is notable because it gives an official voice to privacy advocates, and opens the door for future legislation to prevent abuses of personal information. If nothing else, this document reinforces the importance of the FTC's role in ensuring consumers know how their information will be treated, whether or not privacy remains a social norm.
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