I remember very well when the first one happened. It pissed me off because someone got to see some information I thought was private after I went to the trouble of going through Facebook's previous 50 privacy settings.
My family had a major falling out with my father, to the point where myself and my sister had a restraining order against him when I was 7 and she was 9. I haven't seen him or talked to him in 16 years. After Facebook deleted my privacy settings, I had a message from him sitting in my inbox the next day. My sister called me, crying, because she had gotten the same message. Both of our accounts were previously unsearchable on the site, with all of our data being private. As soon as they rescinded that privacy, our father could tell what cities we live in (in one of our cases, a _very_ small town) and that she had gotten married, we both had changed our first and last names, and one of us had a child. He found me through my mom's friends list, he found my sister through my friends list. All of which were previously hidden.
Nothing came of it besides an unwanted "please call me" message from him, but it's not a far reach from there to actually being located physically and confronted. We sent this man to jail and changed our names to keep away from him, and Facebook, in spite of their "privacy" settings, let him get a glimpse back into our lives.
An article a few years ago talked about what privacy means to rich kids who have everything. Go to a $40k per year boarding school that mummy and daddy pay for? What do you have to hide? Not much.
Then the kids get older and decide "no secrets for anybody!" What's the harm in sharing your life? It's a net win. If you see James got a new turbo jet ski, won't you want to work harder to get one too? Sharing can save the world.
We can't seem to imagine a time when maybe you wanted to keep a secret. Maybe you're helping someone to not be found. Maybe you're helping someone through a bad time in their life. Then, with a profit-oriented privacy change, you end up in the parent's situation.
The world view of the people in charge aren't aligned with "normal." We'll see PR and lip service press releases, but steamrolling over normal people will continue.
On the contrary, don't rich people have a lot more to hide?
Just knowing that your kid is enrolled at Le Rosey signals to a criminal that she is worth kidnapping... and the last status update shows her headed to Ibizia for spring break. In contrast, nobody cares if another poor kid "likes" Justin Bieber. Over-sharing seems a lot riskier for the rich (and famous.) It would be interesting to read the article you mentioned. It's hard to imagine an argument that the rich are not more concerned with privacy than regular people.
Kidnapping for ransom is rare in the United States. It's not good risk/reward. The family of the kid enrolled at Le Rosey is probably living beyond its means, and lacks sufficient credit to pay enough ransom to cover the costs of a kidnapping operation.
The other important point: Nobody older than 25 exists (well nobody older than ~age-of-founder exists. Remember the entire "Never hire anybody over 27!" advice?). Kids don't have major privacy concerns, therefore everybody should have no privacy.
I would donate to your ACLU legal action against FB. I am consistently editing myself on FB, even in private groups, because of a sinking suspicion that with a flick-of-a-switch it can all be public.
I'm not sure that any laws were broken. It's not like we kept the restraining order active for 16 years, and his message wasn't really harassment, more like attempted atonement. At any rate, I do wish companies had to be held to their own site rules, legally. If Pystar break's Apple's TOS they get sued out of business, but if Facebook breaks their privacy settings they get a slap on the wrist from the FTC.
If you do decide to file please let us know. The entire situation sounds like a nightmare and I wonder how many others have faced this issue. On a more encouraging note I recently had to report a fake FB profile that was used to harass a family member and it was removed promptly, which surprised me.
Shit, that sucks -- people are not yet aware of the damage the lack of online privacy can bring. And I fear that because of inertia, when the damages will become visible, then it will be too late.
I kind of wish the similar Google Buzz incident had gotten more press than it did. A boy who wasn't even in a balloon was on the news for days, but the case of a woman who was being harassed on Buzz by her abusive ex was lost in the public mind after a few minutes. Both the Buzz and Facebook cases were decided by the FTC very recently (the Buzz case was settled in October of this year). Perhaps we've reached a turning point in online privacy?
But then, looking at things like Protect-IP and SOPA, perhaps the regulatory answer is to just do away with privacy altogether.
