Privacy...

While wondering about Google and its playing with people's privacy, following thought came to my mind - "Does privacy promote immorality?". Let me start by giving a roadmap to this thought first.
Being social is the characteristic of human beings. We all live in a society, whether we need to or not will be left to one's own judgment. But in almost all cases we need to too. Having a solid credibility in place comes next. If one chooses to trade freely in the society, credibility goes a long way in making sure it happens in seamless fashion. And I mean trade of goods, services even ideas.
Credibility comes with having little or no dark secrets or dust beneath the rug etc. While there is no certain way someone can confirm one's credibility, almost all of us make sure we hide our secrets well or at least do our bit to justify. In any case, we want to slightly open our books to make sure we look good in the public. Sometimes this can get slightly out of hand and people go overboard with their image.
Privacy and the respect for it actually is a progeny of western individualistic school of thought. Obviously what I am doing in my own damn business, but with an emerging market economy everywhere, who knows it might hurt someone else's damn business. This is where the trick lies. Let us take an example -
Mr X is your normal office goer who (according to his friends) loves movies, books and is generally a homebound down-to-earth types person. Interesting in his own ways. Mr X though privately does a lot of sidey things over net like has a alias for sex chat etc. This part only he knows. Mr X has a girlfriend Ms Y. Y likes X for what she knows he is. One day this geeky friend of Y tells her that she found X chatting in lewd lingo over net. Busted!!! Ok now thats not that easy but you can imagine.

Where am I heading? well ok, I think privacy laws just make us more prone to being accountable to society. So if the person is not upright by himself, there is no way you can make him upright.
On the contrary, Indian society laid emphasis on slightly more non-privacy oriented model. This makes sure that each individual in the society keeps a tab on the other as far as morality is concerned.
So while Google is playing with our privacy, I think we are evolving towards a more open society, a society which while empowering an individual, also makes sure that none of his deeds go unwatched!