There is an absolutely fascinating paper, Privacy in a Noise Society, which I've just come across on the web, by Nicklas Lundblad of the St Anna Institute in Stokholm. He puts his finger on one of the key issues relating to privacy in an information society and that is that "...anyone but not everyone can be mapped in detail...We live in a society where it is possible to chart the lives of anyone, but not the lives of everyone." Information overload and cost effectively preclude the latter.

Essential reading.