Privacy issues

With emerging technologies collecting ever more data about our lives their is a clear threat to our personal privacy. The question is how bad is this and what should we do about it. First, I feel that privacy for it's own sake is not as important as it appears at first glance. Until recent history people lived in smaller communities where everyone tended to know everyone Else's "secrets" anyways and they all lived with it.
What I feel makes modern privacy violations so much scarier are 2 key changes. First, is that people have begun to assume that they are more anonymous and have secrecy where they may not. Second, some people are in a position to have far more information on you than you do on them creating a Major imbalance of power.
I believe that new technologies will continue to make society more transparent regardless of how we feel about that. So why fight the tide when the real issues of awareness of and control over that information are far easier to shape.