Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the problem is that privacy, at least in this context, is framed as a "debate" at all, rather than as a matter for individual choice. Some people would gladly share medical information for the greater good if asked. You'd have to pry it from the cold, dead hands of others. The problem is that we currently don't separate those who would like to provide their information from those who would like to refuse beca…
A few points. There isn't any coercion going on with any of the things we're talking about. Every technology product has at least the choice to not use it. It's quite difficult to ask meaningful questions about what users are comfortable with, get meaningful answers, and then figure out how the answer they've already given applies to a grey area situation where the cost of getting it wrong is a lawsuit. It becomes no…
But that's exactly the problem: many of the modern technologies that pose potential risks to privacy don't in practice provide an opt-out for the people whose privacy they might infringe.
Sometimes, you do have a choice. However, if you don't know about it or understand the implications, you can't make an informed decision.
Sometimes you don't get any meaningful choice, for example if governments decide it's OK to share sensitive healthcare information now. Strictly speaking you do have a choice, but that choice is never to visit a doctor or hospital. Try contrasting the dangers from a significant reduction in public trust in the integrity and ethics of the entire medical profession with the hypothetical future benefits of analysing aggregate healthcare data, and let me know which one really seems like the bigger risk.
Sometimes you don't get any choice in practice because your data is collected incidentally. When you were in the background of someone's personal holiday snap, that didn't really matter. When you're in the background of a CCTV image, which is centrally recorded and subject to future data mining operations, it matters more. When you're in the background of numerous CCTV images just because you left your home, which are subject to geotagging, facial recognition, gait analysis, covert audio recording, correlation with other databases such as mobile phone history, ANPR scans and purchase history, permanent archival and any additional data mining techniques that anyone who gets hold of the data might find later... Well, now you're in the plot of a sci-fi short story that doesn't end well.
Except that of course, it's not a story any more. Insurers already bump premiums based on profiling, but that profiling is notoriously inaccurate. Lenders already check credit records, which again are notoriously inaccurate. Employers already not only Google job applicants but in some cases also ask for personal log-in credentials to read through their social networking history. Governments already sell personal data held for legitimate public interest reasons to private parties, and even in seemingly simple cases like the government's vehicle licensing authority in the UK providing details of the registered owner of a car with given plates, this has been widely abused. Where these things have been curtailed -- which doesn't happen nearly as often as it should -- it has mostly been because primary legislation was passed or the rules for government's own departments were updated to cover specific cases, and only after so many people suffered from the intrusion that it became a politically significant issue.
To be clear, I don't object to the idea that there are potentially great benefits to be had from data mining, including in sensitive cases like public health data. But I think you are almost completely ignoring the accompanying risks, despite a seemingly endless stream of failures resulting in serious adverse consequences for individuals whose privacy wasn't adequately protected. We need the rest of how society works to catch up with the capabilities of modern technology before we can reap the benefits without paying too high a price.