If you're going to participate in the conversation, there's not much you can do about privacy. Just don't engage in known felonious behavior here, i guess is one approach. But what also concerns me is potential commercial use of this kind of information about me. I don't want to see unsolicited sales "offers" based on my online discussions. - Tom Landini

Mike, good post. My sense is privacy is a myth (btw, law enforcement uses NCIC, a comprehensive, powerful federal data base). Should you want an unvarnished look at the practical issues of privacy and tech today check out No Place to Hide by WaPo reporter Robert O'Harrow, Jr. - Dave Martin

Privacy, like security is all about trade-offs. The climate these days is pretty extreme though, between massive government surveillance and commercial exploitation of personal information. Once "out there", data never goes away. Desire for privacy goes well beyond hiding illegal behaviors. I'd recommend recent books by Daniel J. Solove & Bruce Schneier for a deeper perspective. - Logical Extremes

I've started being careful about what I make available on twitter/flickr/facebook and friendfeed. 80% of what I do day to day would never be a problem, but things that someone could see and *could* later use against me or bug me about don't go up. Kinda limits what you can do, but until there is a effective way of filtering updates and media automatically depending on whom is reading/viewing there really isn't much else you can do is there? - Royce Mathew

All social media has potential privacy issues. Big brother is always watching. - Zulu