Rutgers trial highlights demise of privacy

I'll be watching you.

And if I'm not, the store security monitor will. And the credit-card issuer and the Internet provider and the cellphone company and the ubiquitous traffic cams.

And the watchers are only revving up: One Texas sheriff recently got his own drone, although (highflying karma) the $300,000 spy-in-the-sky did just crash into the SWAT team.

I'd say it's about time to admit the obvious: That glorious legal concept "expectation of privacy" is sounding pretty hollow these days.

Do you really think E-ZPass and MetroCard aren't keeping tabs on you? Paranoiac's Rule of Thumb: Never trust anyone who runs capital letters together in unconventional ways.

No one could have predicted that Rutgers student Tyler Clementi would jump to his death off the George Washington Bridge after learning he'd been spied on by a laptop camera in the dorm with another man. But on Friday, a New Jersey jury found Clementi's roommate, Dharun Ravi, had violated the young man's privacy and was guilty of bias intimidation based on sexual orientation, a hate crime.

The case stirred a national debate about same-sex bullying and teen suicide -- worthy topics, of course. But there's another lesson in the Rutgers case that should get some attention too.

It may be the last gasp of outrage at privacy violated.

Almost every laptop now comes with a high-resolution camera. Almost every new mobile phone can now shoot video. The lines between watching and spying are being erased with technology, ever cheaper, ever easier to conceal.

When everyone's watching everyone -- often surreptitiously -- the very concept of personal privacy is under mortal attack. When everything we do in life is somehow captured digitally, people eventually stop demanding, "Hey, just leave me alone."

1. Every keystroke still lives on my computer.

2. No Facebook message is ever really erased.

3. Amazon cares what I've been reading.

4. Cellphone towers follow me everywhere.

5. Even if I forget, it's all up there in the cloud.