Kate Klonick in an opinion piece for the NYT:
The instructions were straightforward: At some point in the next two weeks, try to determine a stranger’s identity, in a public place, using only Google search on your phone, based on things the stranger said loudly enough for lots of others to hear and things that are displayed on the person’s clothing or bags, like logos or a monogram.
Is Your Seatmate Googling You?
Most privacy is really obscurity. It’s just that we mostly don’t care, until we do.
What is private information? Is it that which literally no one else knows about you? Almost certainly not. Information that just your spouse or immediate family know? Probably broader than that. Information that isn’t Google-able? Maybe.
Privacy is more likely just the sense that there is information about yourself that you would like to limit distribution of in some way. And this is a core tension: privacy is different for every single person and yet it is a burden to constantly tweak those privacy controls.