Senior computer engineering major

As President Obama calls on congressional leaders to restrict NSA collection of telephone records, I wonder about the future of my privacy — not just as an American citizen, but as a human being.

I see privacy as being closely tied with technological development. In some cases, technology leads to change in the culture of privacy. For example, the introduction of the automobile in the early 20th century provided people with the option to travel in a new personal space rather than in public. Social media is a more recent example because it allows people to broadcast personal information that previously might have been kept under wraps.

In other cases, feelings about privacy have brought about change in technology. Encryption techniques have been adapted to protect personal information such as emails, sensitive documents and credit card numbers.

In the case of the leaked surveillance activities of the National Security Agency, the advent of “big data” allowed the government to collect unprecedented volumes of data on its citizens. While I’m at least somewhat creeped out by the amount of information government intelligence has collected about me, this intrusion of privacy might not be what we should be most concerned about.

Let’s do a quick thought experiment. If I knew your name, how much could I find out about you from public information on the Internet? Finding your birthday would probably not be too difficult, and your address would be a piece of cake (try searching your name on Spokeo and see what you get).

Depending on your Facebook settings, I could find out who your friends are and what you’re interested in. I might even be able to get your phone number. Maybe your settings only allow friends to get your information, but are you really that picky about accepting friend requests? And, oh yeah, remember that questionable tweet you made last weekend when you were tipsy? I could save that on my computer and hold on to it indefinitely.

Add some sophisticated hacking to all this (#DataBreach2014) and now you’re vulnerable to full-scale identity theft.

I don’t mean to make anybody paranoid from all this — and, for the record, I have no intention of stalking you — but the reality is most of your personal information that has ever been stored electronically will be stored in a server somewhere forever. Some of it is public and some of it is protected, but all of it is sitting out in the wild, waiting to be exploited.

I’m not sure how I feel about my personal history becoming more and more public, but I’m also not sure I have much say in the matter. My 21st-century life will inevitably be on the grid. The information age will bring plenty of good, but I still sometimes fantasize about what it would be like to escape to the woods and live a life of true anonymity.

[ READ MORE: Implications of Internet privacy ]