• The New York Times, Tuesday, June 21, 2011 12:02 PM

Amid a proliferation of Web-connected recording devices and image-tagging tools, The New York Times considers the pros and cons of privacy's demise. "To some, [our current situation] could conjure up comparisons to the agents of repressive governments in the Middle East who monitor online protests and exact retribution offline.

"But the positive effects can be numerous: criminality can be ferreted out, falsehoods can be disproved and individuals can become Internet icons." Like individuals, marketers have much to gain, and lose, from a privacy-free paradigm. "Publicity" -- something normally associated with celebrities -- "is no longer scarce," Dave Morgan, the chief executive of Simulmedia, wrote in an essay this month. "He posited that because the Internet 'can't be made to forget' images and moments from the past, notes NYT -- "The reality of an inescapable public world is an issue we are all going to hear a lot more about."

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