I've never had the phone company suggest I apply for a job there based on things they know about me.

Your bank has information about your accounts. So it should be ok to make it public, right?

How did you make that leap? But, the card companies do sell your data in "aggregate". The phone companies as well.

In many countries around the world phone companies are highly regulated entities.

Fair point, however just because the phone company/NSA has this information, IMHO that doesn't make unnecessarily intrusive apps OK with me.

To each his own. In my view, the cat's out of the bag, so I might as well get a better product out of it.

Well, to me it's a problem. Here is an example of the kind of thing that is already happening: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161130/09293036157/brook...

To me, if 1 is getting caught, it makes me question how many are not getting caught. Or are getting caught and let off the hook because the people around them won't hold them accountable.

If we continue to allow this, we're just going to expand the amount of abuse. And yes I know Uber is tracking location not access to your phone's mic.

Abuse of power is a serious problem. It's hard to imagine that more regulation would stop bad actors like that judge, since he's already breaking the law.

I can't think of a way to keep privacy technologically without sacrificing the modern conveniences I very much appreciate. Uber in particular has dramatically improved my lifestyle. Google Maps as well.

Experiments like justin.tv show one solution to the problem. Justin Kan, during those 8 months he broadcast his life, would not have feared a secret wiretap. It might be a couple decades more, but I expect that eventually it'll be normal to wear a camera on your face. When everyone broadcasts, surveillance is meaningless.

by analogy: When your house is on fire, your normal response shouldnt be "well, lets burn the car too."

The usual response is to stop the fire.

I don't equate loss of privacy to a house fire. To be a good analogy, burning my car would need to be beneficial in some way.

I see what you're trying to get at, but I there's probably better way to make your point.

:(

As far as I know the location data a phone company has is not as fine-grained as GPS. But I agree with your point that a person's call data records are very sensitive information.

So what? They don't use that data for any other reason than for billing. If they do otherwise and they are found out it would be a PR and legal disaster of epic proportions!