Mike Waddingham writes about how Facebook has run afoul of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and will likely end up in court.

He notes:

I’ve never had a Facebook account.  I can be patient.

But those that still trust Facebook with personal information — and haven’t bothered to examine the minutia of the site’s privacy settings — will continue to have their personal information shared with 400 million users and thousands of advertisers, data aggregators and, well, pretty much anyone else on the Internet.  At least until the wheels of justice grind to conclusion…

You may not have a Facebook account – but when everybody else around you does, it’s like pulling one string out of a rug — you can still see the pattern.  You’re still in the photos.  Your holidays may still be announced.  Your birthday may still be announced. You’re still husband of, and father to, and friend of friend for all sorts of people who will share freely about you.  Perhaps you aren’t as semantically dereferenceable as you otherwise would be – but you aren’t invisible either.

On the other hand, if are ever accused of a crime, chances are that some other poor schmuck’s picture will end up on the evening news… that’s handy.

One last point — Mike forgot to add governments to the list of places you are sharing your personal information with.   Facebook gives governments the ability to collect and analyse the one thing that is still uncool for them to ask for – details of private lives.  As long as we all remain overfed and obsessed with who won Survivor and how to get an iPad, nobody will mind that Facebook is the worlds greatest surveillance tool.  I hope it stays that way for a very long time.