Because it's so far beyond hopeless, getting into the weeds of how someone is supposedly doing things wrong is irrelevant to normal life. If you're a homeowner, then your name and address are public (at least in the US) despite phone books not being a thing anymore.
Consider this: it is established practice to distribute all sorts of information about people that is far more intimate than your home address, if it is only "anonymized" in an accepted manner. HIPAA is no bar to this.
But decades ago, a researcher showed that the vast majority of people can be identified through only a few data points, like for example gender, birth date, and zip code. These are available in supposedly non-identifiable data sets. She went on to demonstrate that a US state governor at the time could be linked to his health records, which were public sans name and address.
It's about straightforward math - each data point, if more or less randomly distributed, reduces the number of people exponentially, so "anonymizing" people in data sets doesn't work and never did.
"Fingerprinting" people based on "anonymized" data is one thing, then there's just the constant total security breaches. My primary care doctor's practice had a massive leak of data because their accountant screwed up. There were no consequences for either entity except for someone having to write an embarrassing letter.
There's also the fact that every bit of information the US government had on millions of individuals with a security clearance was compromised by someone hacking into the Office of Personnel Management some years ago. Everything from the intimate details of their lives collected by background investigators, to fingerprints, everything on anybody (it was rumored that the CIA has a separate system, but otherwise everybody - for instance, James Comey mentioned it impacted him)
The entire discussion of privacy and security has a "Emperor's New Clothes" aspect to it. Whoever got the OPM information presumably was able to wipe up virtually every covert US agent abroad, and create a file on virtually every cleared person in the US. And maybe they shared it with allies too. Why do you think American politics has gotten so crazy and paranoid in the last few years?
Talking about improving security on the internet is like talking about organizing a neighborhood watch in Hiroshima just after it was nuked. It's over!
The only thing I can think of is social shunning/shaming of those who don't respect personal privacy voluntarily. Barriers are not impregnable, they are symbolic.
What did it matter, 30 to 50 years ago, if things were public. Public how?
Well, sure it was public knowledge about home ownership, but you'd have to fax, or call, to get the info! And a person would have to do the work of a lookup of paper files. And so often there was a minor charge, to pay for that bit of work.
Maybe even long distance phone costs(fax), or shipping costs too!
So sure, it was public knowledge, but not usable in some sort of mass exploit. And beyond that, people performing mass exploits encountered people at the other end too!
So people would notice a change in behaviour, strange things happening en mass.
Sure, "a dude" could pull tricks against an account, but hundreds? Millions? No way!
So legisltion, and behaviour needs to catch up, and embrace the differences today.
Consider this: it is established practice to distribute all sorts of information about people that is far more intimate than your home address, if it is only "anonymized" in an accepted manner. HIPAA is no bar to this.
But decades ago, a researcher showed that the vast majority of people can be identified through only a few data points, like for example gender, birth date, and zip code. These are available in supposedly non-identifiable data sets. She went on to demonstrate that a US state governor at the time could be linked to his health records, which were public sans name and address.
It's about straightforward math - each data point, if more or less randomly distributed, reduces the number of people exponentially, so "anonymizing" people in data sets doesn't work and never did.
"Fingerprinting" people based on "anonymized" data is one thing, then there's just the constant total security breaches. My primary care doctor's practice had a massive leak of data because their accountant screwed up. There were no consequences for either entity except for someone having to write an embarrassing letter.
There's also the fact that every bit of information the US government had on millions of individuals with a security clearance was compromised by someone hacking into the Office of Personnel Management some years ago. Everything from the intimate details of their lives collected by background investigators, to fingerprints, everything on anybody (it was rumored that the CIA has a separate system, but otherwise everybody - for instance, James Comey mentioned it impacted him)
The entire discussion of privacy and security has a "Emperor's New Clothes" aspect to it. Whoever got the OPM information presumably was able to wipe up virtually every covert US agent abroad, and create a file on virtually every cleared person in the US. And maybe they shared it with allies too. Why do you think American politics has gotten so crazy and paranoid in the last few years?
Talking about improving security on the internet is like talking about organizing a neighborhood watch in Hiroshima just after it was nuked. It's over!
The only thing I can think of is social shunning/shaming of those who don't respect personal privacy voluntarily. Barriers are not impregnable, they are symbolic.