Real life privacy concerns for the Net from Bruce Schneier

Hey, Bruce really knows real-life privacy and security concerns for the Net, and discussed the real stuff at Offhand but on record

The lesson in all of this
is that little we do is ephemeral anymore. We leave electronic audit
trails everywhere we go, with everything we do. This won't change: We
can't turn back technology. But as technology makes our conversations
less ephemeral, we need laws to step in and safeguard our privacy. We
need comprehensive data privacy laws, protecting our data and
communications regardless of where it is stored or how it is processed.
We need laws forcing companies to keep it private and delete it as soon
as it is no longer needed, and laws giving us the right to delete our
data from third-party sites. And we need international cooperation to
ensure that companies cannot flaunt data privacy laws simply by moving
themselves offshore.

Laws can only go so far, though. Law or no law, when
something is made public, it's too late. And many of us like having
complete records of all our e-mail at our fingertips; it's like our
offline memory.

In the end, this is a cultural issue.