One possible correction to your notes: I seem to recall it was Nicole Wong at Google who said “We absolutely compete on privacy.” That was a bit of a contrast to the prior speaker, from LinkedIn, who said that their view of privacy was that it was a retention issue rather than customer-acquisition factor (i.e. bad privacy practices might cause them to lose customers).

Then the Facebook guy straddled, saying basically, “I agree with both of them.”

I think you are mostly right about the gap between privacy and privacy skeptics. Statements like “You have zero privacy anyway” are just a show of cluelessness. Nonetheless it is important to argue, and argue well, with the no-privacy-people, because it is foremost a problem of social agreement. (And many privacy enhancing techniques only work if a large part of society uses them.)

Resignation is to be avoided. Even if privacy where nonexistent wouldn’t it be better to work toward it?

After the roundtable, I spoke with Tim Sparapani about his error, and pointed him to my research regarding deletion speeds of online pictures: http://michaeljaylissner.com/blog/testing-deletion-speed-of-online-photo-sites

So far, no response from him or Facebook.

As for the government mandating privacy, I totally disagree. Firstly I think it is unenforceable (as long as we are to have anything remotely resembling a free Internet). Secondly I don’t think it would be a good idea. If a free and efficient market for privacy decides that privacy has little value — say because social norms are indeed changing — then having the government mandate privacy goes against the basic tenet of self-determination in a free society.

Now it could be that the government will impose privacy by default, without relying on the market. And maybe this would even be a good idea. But I don’t see it happening.

(These points are meant to be provocative, I look forward to your replies.)