Cory Doctorow is usually one to decry the use of fear, uncertainty, and doubt in articles is spinning plenty of it when it serves to support one of his pet issues. The privacy of personal data is certainly going to be an issue that defines our generation over the coming years, however, to compare it to nuclear waste is bit on the extreme side.

Every gram - sorry, byte - of personal information these feckless data-packrats collect on us should be as carefully accounted for as our weapons-grade radioisotopes, because once the seals have cracked, there is no going back. Once the local sandwich shop’s CCTV has been violated, once the HMRC has dumped another 25 million records, once London Underground has hiccoughup up a month’s worth of travelcard data, there will be no containing it. (The Guardian)

What Cory forgets is what dozens of security experts have been saying for over a decade. There is no market incentive for security until the consumers create one and given security is a process, just applying a “security tax” on privacy related technologies is not going to solve the problem. What is needed is increased accountability and enforcement of punitive measures when negligence results in personal data being leaked.

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