Go Jen King! Awesome paper by a former colleague:

Professor Alan Westin has pioneered a popular “segmentation” to describe Americans as fitting into one of three subgroups concerning privacy: privacy “fundamentalists” (high concern for privacy), “pragmatists” (mid-level concern), and the “unconcerned” (low or no privacy concern). When compared with these segments, Californians are more likely to be privacy pragmatists or fundamentalists, and less likely to be unconcerned about privacy. Fundamentalists were much more likely to be correct in their views of privacy rules. In light of this finding, we question Westin’s conclusion that privacy pragmatists are well served by self-regulatory and opt-out approaches, as we found this subgroup of consumers is likely to misunderstand default rules in the marketplace.

At some point security becomes so expensive and time-consuming that only an elite can afford privacy. Is there a case to be made that regulation of the data market is needed to bring the cost down?

A question I often wonder about is what real costs do we bear today if we want to control our data and who benefits most from generating entropy (or lack of individual awareness/control)?