SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Technological changes and personal privacy have been at odds ever since... Amid privacy backlash, Web

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Technological changes and personal privacy have been at odds ever since modern notions of privacy emerged more than a century ago.

"Numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that 'what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the housetops'," wrote two Boston lawyers in 1890 in a seminal paper that articulated the modern "right to be left alone" that is the basis of U.S. privacy law.

Once it was the invention of the camera, the high-speed printer, tabloid newspapers, the telephone. Now it's the computer, mobile camera phones, video surveillance, the always-on Internet, blogging and social network dating sites.

"If I am a corporate lawyer by day and a Level 10 Elf by night, I am not sure I want everyone to know my different identities," says David Holtzman, author of a forthcoming book "Privacy Lost: How Technology is Endangering your Privacy."

Fast-growing U.S. social network Web site Facebook found out the hard way last week when it introduced a new feature to its member profile pages that allowed users to track their friends' online activities. A vast outpouring of protest among college students forced the company to introduce new privacy features as critics parodied the site as "Stalkbook."

The 2004 U.S. presidential election turned in part on a furious online debate over whether George W. Bush or John Kerry lied about their war records.

But it's not just politicians that are subject to such scrutiny; increasingly we all are. The impulse of everyone from job recruiters to casual acquaintances and first-time daters is to look online and see what the Web says.

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