In keeping with this administrations status quo the government has come out and said that we shouldn't care about our privacy anymore.  We should redifine what privacy is because the thought of being anonymous in anything is just stupid.

From the article Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence says "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that."  OK - there is a huge difference between google having my information and the government having easy access to anything I type into google.  He goes on to say that kids today give away more and more informations on sites such as this one.  Well you join a site like this knowing that what you do will be publically searchable - if you so choose.  Any good social networking site should let you define what gets shared and what doesn't.  

What the government really should be doing is talking to companies like Google, MySpace and Facebook and making laws to restrict them from sharing user information and not allowing them to use the information they have in certain ways.  

The real difference here is that a company can only do so much with my information were as the governement has no end to what it will do with that information.  And until we stop torrturing people in Cuba the government can't say they can be trusted with my information.  If I don't like how a private company uses my information I stop using their service, thus they lose revenue and change their ways.  It's a lot harder to change your country. 

People always come back and say if you don't have anything to hide why do you care.  This is a slippery slop.  Image forward a few months/years after they have forfitted whatever rights you used to have and you search for "tax breaks" or "tax loopholes" and the next year you are audited.  Is that a wonderful coincidence or something more sinister.  It has happend in every great empire - the sentiments  "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely" have been proven true many a times.