To ‘unpack’ my earlier comment:
Comment posters who leave behind thoughtful comments increase the value of a blog, however incrementally, in exchange for a similar incremental increase in the value of their own. If the nofollow attribute is set on our comments, we are adding to the common weal without adding to our own. In this respect, I am very much in accord with Ayn Rand that it is wrong to ask an individual to contribute to the value of another (or collective other) without offering a corresponding increase to that individual.

Your observations about Facebook, YouTube, etc. are spot-on. I honestly think that, while the consumer / individual may win some of the battles, the war for our data is already lost. Too many people, like one poster above, are willing for the merchants to anticipate our needs and wants (all the while defining them, as well, by controlling our options) for the needed restrictions to be enacted or, if enacted, enforced. Two points for George Orwell.

Because commercial interests can tap into a dazzling array of public and private data (vehicle registration, drivers license, loan, revolving credit and mortgage records, military and scholastic data, health insurance claims, phone records including GPS traces, ad nauseum) there is little real hope for any defensive scheme. Even seeding with false data is of limited effectiveness because it sticks out against the trend of ‘good’ data.

The American people have already handed over the keys to their persona and can’t revoke them. Other countries are too close behind us to point any fingers. When the whole bus leaves the road, the whole bus crashes.

It is growing increasingly difficult to avoid being forced to contribute. That limits the value of data atrophy. We are constantly compelled to refresh the data ourselves. We renew our drivers licenses and our fishing licenses. We register the end of our marriage licenses, the birth of our children and the deaths of our parents. We sign up for courses and have to formally abandon them or take a failing grade as penalty if we cannot see them all the way through. At every junction, the bony finger of reasonableness is pointed … but the composite of the data available to analyze us is mind-boggling. Individually, the data collection IS reasonable. But the disparate wisps of data are joined and become actionable information. In the aggregation, the reasonableness is lost.

I dealt with one facet of this -corporate phishing- on my own blog tonight, just before coming here. Cash is being phased out and implantable RFIDs are moving forward, albeit cautiously at the moment. Some are in the currency, your garments, your passport. Your data is being mugged.

And here is the care those records receive: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7107975.stm

So, what is the answer to the needlessly invasive questions posed by corporations and the promiscuity with which government exchanges data with them?

Ayn Rand to the rescue: Atlas Shrugged … and so should we.