Are We Becoming Numb to Creeping Privacy Invasion?

As the political debate swirls around the U.S. President's apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to permit the National Security Agency to engage in domestic wiretapping and email monitoring without obtaining warrants, I find myself comparing and contrasting the outrage I feel about being spied upon by my own government to the way I feel about being spied on by brands whose services I use and trust. It's interesting to me, though, that I seem to trust many service providers who routinely spy on my online behavior.

On the other hand, I'm sure that many of you felt a sense of outrage when you discovered that Apple associates your personal ID with every tune you've ever put into iTunes, whether or not you purchased that music through iTunes. (By the way, this is a feature you can turn off.)

"The language in their new policy [updated on July 1 2004], made it clear that they will be pooling all the information they collect on you from all of their various services. Moreover, they may keep this information indefinitely, and give this information to whomever they wish. All that's required is for Google to "have a good faith belief that access, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public." - from "Gmail is Creepy"

To be fair, the post goes on to point out that Google's privacy policy is almost identical to those of Microsoft, Yahoo!, Alexa, and Amazon. When you read each of these carefully, which most of us do when we opt in for personalized service, you realize how much control you're relinquishing and how much trust you're conveying. When you sign up for accounts with any of these service providers, you explicitly opt in to a level of information monitoring that connects your personal account information with the searches you do, the emails you send, the products and promotions you view, and so on.

What I notice is that although I realize I'm granting these service providers the right to spy on my searches, my interests, my purchases, and my downloads, it doesn't really bother me.  I personally tend to give Google, Apple, Amazon, et al, incredible insights into my individual habits. Compared to many e-denizens, I realize I'm naively assuming that these brands that I know and trust won't use this vast treasure trove of information they have about me and my habits to cause me harm. However, if I learned that my information was being used in a way that violated my trust and my privacy, I would be livid. And, it would be too late to do anything about it.

So, here's my thought for the day. Having allowed myself to be lulled into letting my eservice providers spy on me routinely, do I have a leg to stand on when I discover that my government is routinely monitoring my online behavior and my phone calls? Haven't I already proven that I'm willing to sacrifice my privacy for convenience? If we opt in to give certain parties access to detailed information about ourselves—from our banks to our retailers—are we still entitled to expect that nobody will aggregate that information and misuse it in ways that damage our reputations or cause us harm? And, having opted into monitoring services by commercial providers, do we still have the right to insist that a law enforcement or government agency has probable cause and a warrant before they spy on us?

Remember Scott McNealy's apocryphal comment in early 1999: "You have zero privacy. Get over it!"?

In September 2003, Scott elaborated:  "The point I was making was someone already has your medical records. Someone has my dental records. Someone has my financial records. Someone knows just about everything about me...Do you want to refute my statement? Visa knows what you bought. You have no privacy. Get over it. That's what I said."

I welcome your thoughts on this thorny issue!