"All alone, no light, hard to breathe- now that's one man whose data is secure!"

In typical satire fashion, The Onion describes an option for increased privacy: Google's "Opt-Out". In fact, this would provide you with “complete” privacy: No outside access, no innovation, but a return to rudimentary survival methods. This is a funny extreme because of the people who fear the information available. I know my mom is constantly concerned about privacy. She shreds every envelope that has her name and address on it, even though, as my dad points out almost every time "that information is available in the phonebook". So truly, privacy on a global scale can only really be found through this idea of a remote village with no phone or internet access. But then, as Born Digital has highlighted, there would be the severe lack of privacy within the village. Everyone would know your every business. While I can find out random information about people I don't know just because it's there, why would I? And if I did, it wouldn't make any difference anyway. So as for a complete privacy, there really isn’t such a thing. And there isn’t, largely, a necessity for one. Bank information- sure, needs to be private. Constant stream of GPS location- could fall in the wrong hands. Other things, however, such as questionable/criminal activity or crazy pictures that you’ll regret in a few days or a few years, or even the random nothings that just appear on the internet... that can’t really be up to a form of regulation to protect.

On the opposite extreme, in the interview with the faux-representatives of Google, there's some element of truth to their invasion of privacy. As the interviewee said, "If you don't want to give us complete access to your most private thoughts and feelings- that's fine- you can just toil in the hinterlands and die young". While outlandish, Google, and other such search engines, really do find and make available this information with little or no permission, though it could be argued that posting information is, in its own right, providing permission. While there are specific people you wouldn’t want to have specific information about you, it just won’t matter in the hands of the overwhelming majority of people. The issue is that we can’t really decide who gets to know what about us.  

http://www.theonion.com/video/google-opt-out-feature-lets-users-protect-privacy,14358/