From the article: "The average Internet user seems unconcerned about participatory surveillance. He is prepared to give up his privacy to get valuable service for free. As a result there is little or no organized resistance to automated mass surveillance."

This is true and quite depressing, but I also think it's because people aren't fully aware of just how much tracking takes place and how often. It's clearly not in the interests of Google, Facebook and others to reveal what they track and record (hence why their privacy policies are so vaguely worded).

Would people care more about privacy if they were better informed? Maybe (or maybe not).

Consider the following scenario. You buy a Chromebook and use it exclusively for a year as your main computer. You have to be signed in to use ChromeOS, so Google potentially tracks everything you do online. We don't know exactly what Google captures because they don't actually say. But let's assume that after one year of Chromebook use, Google have records of the following:

- Every single website you visited (and the duration and time of day).

- A detailed picture of your online shopping habits, including what you shopped for and maybe even purchased online.

- Every document you printed included number of pages, time of day you printed, number of copies, the printer you sent the print job to. Whether it was colour or B&W.

- Every Google app you use, when you use it and how often etc.

- Details about the order in which you do things on your computer. Always check your email as the first thing when you switch on? Google will undoubtedly know this from analysing your activity.

And let's not forget that Google will stitch together what you though were disparate journeys. Browsing a shopping site for a particular product? Later you go to YouTube to search for a review of the product. Google joins up the connection. (A reminder that this is all speculation on my part but I think it's fairly realistic speculation.)

Now imagine if all this data was presented to you at the end of the year. You might think it's incredibly cool to see so much about yourself - if it was only yourself who saw this data. How would you feel if you knew it was Google that was seeing and keeping this data? You might think it perfectly benign and necessary for the personalisation features you enjoy. Or maybe you might decide that Chromebooks are the biggest privacy hole imaginable and vow to stop using them.