You might well see something in the realm of HIPAA aimed at the Googles and Facebooks of the world relatively soon. I'd have to believe that the federal govern

You might well see something in the realm of HIPAA aimed at the Googles and Facebooks of the world relatively soon. I'd have to believe that the federal government, and law enforcement generally, would be excluded from such a law, though (in much the same way they're already excluded from HIPAA itself). Even assuming otherwise, laws restricting what the government itself can do aren't always terribly robust (see, for example, the Patriot Act). I appreciate the idea that private companies are as much or possibly more of a concern in this space as the government, but the problems of the two really move in concert. As the scope of data Google has on you grows, so does the power of the third-party doctrine.