Privacy is definitely going away in the public space. But I'm not so sure privacy in, well, the private space is going away.
We may even see a movement --heck, it may even get a name one of these days-- for apartments and houses built in a way that some rooms get a "100% no intrusive technology inside" treatment.
For example you may have an intelligent fridge (so that it can send spam as already happened and why not be part of a botnet mining bitcoins), intelligent TV which can report your mood to advertizers, etc. but have, say, a bathroom with no intelligent lightswitches (because even lightswitches will surely have NSA-friendly webcams and microphones), with no WiFi and just a "detector" at the door ringing a bell in case you try to enter with a smartphone / smartglasses / whatever.
Same for the bathroom and the toilets.
I don't know about you, but as long as the state isn't forcing me to have a webcam and a microphone in my bedroom and in my bathroom, I'll still have privacy there.
I see more and more people now putting a little piece of post-it on the webcam of their laptop (e.g. MacBook, on which there's no physical slider to obscure the cam).
In other words: as long as I'm still a free man, I get to decide where, on my private property, I do still have privacy.
And I invite you in ten years in my property and you'll tell me if the NSA can switch on a webcam and a microphone in my bedroom or not ; )
Haha, I have the post-it, colored with sharpie to blend in because people pointed it out and chuckled at it.
I really don't see a smartphone detector in the bathroom, but maybe you just turn it off, I don't think the bathroom is an issue. The bedroom maybe, but I would assume most smartphone owners sleep with theirs in the room, among other devices. The overall connectivity of households and their data to "the grid" is increasing rapidly. There will be some privacy, it's not a 24/7 visual feed, but the government, Google, Facebook, hackers, et al. will be doing what they do, and people will be giving it to them.
"Similarly, privacy is going away,..."
Privacy is definitely going away in the public space. But I'm not so sure privacy in, well, the private space is going away.
We may even see a movement --heck, it may even get a name one of these days-- for apartments and houses built in a way that some rooms get a "100% no intrusive technology inside" treatment.
For example you may have an intelligent fridge (so that it can send spam as already happened and why not be part of a botnet mining bitcoins), intelligent TV which can report your mood to advertizers, etc. but have, say, a bathroom with no intelligent lightswitches (because even lightswitches will surely have NSA-friendly webcams and microphones), with no WiFi and just a "detector" at the door ringing a bell in case you try to enter with a smartphone / smartglasses / whatever.
Same for the bathroom and the toilets.
I don't know about you, but as long as the state isn't forcing me to have a webcam and a microphone in my bedroom and in my bathroom, I'll still have privacy there.
I see more and more people now putting a little piece of post-it on the webcam of their laptop (e.g. MacBook, on which there's no physical slider to obscure the cam).
In other words: as long as I'm still a free man, I get to decide where, on my private property, I do still have privacy.
And I invite you in ten years in my property and you'll tell me if the NSA can switch on a webcam and a microphone in my bedroom or not ; )