Back in college I wrote a short paper on the role of an increasingly intrusive media/advertising machine and the potential individual response to guard privacy. I realized that some excerpts (actually most of the paper) applied to reputation and the increasing need for individuals to take an active roll in managing and assuring the accuracy of the digital reputation that follows them wherever they go.
Pretty much substitue reputation for privacy and you get the point (and keep in mind this a few years ago, the Clinton reference should give the timeframe away 
):
The recent rapid acceleration of the consumer economy has brought with it a number of unique issues previously un-confronted. Consumers are demanding a more narrowly defined customization of goods and services. As a result, producers, and more specifically marketers, are implementing creative means that are testing the bounds of traditional advertising. The most commonly argued boundary tested is that of individual privacy rights. As each new channel of communication is exploited, advertising techniques can be readily seen as increasingly intrusive.
It began rather harmlessly. The casual reader of a local Sunday newspaper began to notice advertisements strategically placed between the print stories. However, the option was theirs to ignore or absorb this information.
The smothering deployment of the door-to-door salesman in the late 1940s and early 1950s drove the US Supreme Court to issue an opinion that such solicitations were simply opportunistic nuisances and that not even the First Amendment of the Constitution gave companies the right to invade “the living right of others to privacy and repose.” However, regressive policy starting in the 1970s slowly reversed the previous Courts decisions on restrictions of corporate speech.
The popularization and mass distribution of the television into the American home quickly compounded the problem. No longer were door-to-door salesmen needed to corner you in your home. Under the auspice of this “freely” provided entertainment medium, for approximately 8 minutes of every 30 minutes of viewing time, the unsuspecting audience is bombarded with persuasive advertising specifically honed to the mathematically-determined demographic most likely to be watching at that exact moment.
With the advent and commercialization of the Internet, wily advertisers began to hack away at the chinks in the armor created by these corporation-liberating legal precedents with the intent of delivering even more highly directed ad content. Through the use of ever evolving technology, marketers can distribute ad content rapidly and en-masse. More disturbingly, they can track and analyze the viewer’s actions as a result of viewing the ad. Thus, today’s Internet marketers, the equivalent of an electronic door-to-door salesman, have arguably become more annoying and intrusive than any of their predecessors. But did consumers invite this intrusion on themselves, or is the runaway freight train of electronic marketing a completely autonomous disease infecting all that it touches?
The point at which, and under what conditions, an advertiser crosses the threshold of privacy and becomes considered intrusive needs to be identified. However, in order to attempt to determine a common and reasonable threshold, a generally accepted definition of privacy must first be agreed upon.
In its simplest form, privacy can be defined as the state of being secluded or hidden from the presence or view of others . This simple definition becomes exponentially more complex when the innate anonymity of the Internet is considered, because with the level of abstraction the Internet brings, trying to define the meaning of “presence” and “view”, especially in Internet-speak, is a task as convoluted as Bill Clinton’s questioning of the meaning of the word “is.”
Due to this inherent ambiguity of the Internet medium, privacy can only be differentiated as being either passive or active. In an unregulated arena, all privacy is actively implemented. Take, as a very basic example, the story of Adam and Eve. Once they had tasted the forbidden fruit and God manifested their shame, they made a conscious effort to conceal what they now considered private. This kind of active creation of privacy is in stark contrast of passive privacy, where Adam and Eve would expect each other to instinctively look away and hence generate an illusion of privacy through indifference. However, it is instilled in the very nature of humans to not look away. It is the reason children look and point at differently-abled people. It is the reason why traffic jams occur as a result of “rubber necking.” It is the reason much of today’s popular culture revolves around “reality” shows. It would take a great deal (perhaps impossibly) more socialization to remove this trait from human behavior.
This leaves us with two general options for protection of individual privacy from intrusive advertising: An active policy, where the consumer, either through education or some sort of filtering intermediary, maintains control over their own privacy, or a passive policy where privacy is maintained through self-regulation within the advertising profession.
Self-regulation, in a market-based economy, is not a realistic, viable alternative. By removing a corporation’s self-inclination to advertise (as long as they are within the bounds of the law), eliminates its incentive to innovate. However, at the same time, an active policy should protect individual’s privacy without hindering the flow of information. Individuals who desire the information in advertising should not have their access to it impeded.
Assuming that the advertising is not predatory in nature (a topic too broad to be even briefly addressed here), the onus falls squarely on the consumers in a market based economy to enforce a standard of privacy. This may require them to become savvier than they currently are as to what they share and whom they share it with. Additionally, the continuing advances made in Internet/computer technology will ease the burden of the consumer by creating simple, but effective filtering methods. The influence of the consumer’s decisions to implement or not implement these policies will have a direct effect on advertisers. Advertising and spam (unsolicited junk email) continue to exist for a reason. Obviously, to some degree, it is working and generating sales for companies. Simple economics dictates that if demand trickles to a point at which return falls below a certain level, the advertiser will discontinue to electronically invade privacy (although it is almost guaranteed they will find another exploitable medium).
Consumers should realize that there is a tradeoff between the demand that they generate for custom or highly specialized goods and services and their closely guarded personal information. It is a symbiotic relationship where one cannot be had without the other. Thus, attempting to protect the rights of digital marketers to advertise should be as much of a priority as protecting the privacy rights of the individuals they advertise to.
