It's ironic that HIPAA, the legislation to protect healthcare information, was spawned to allow individuals to control who has access to their personal health information, does not apply to Google or others in the same business.

That means a patient who agrees to transfer medical records to an external health service run by Google or Microsoft could be unwittingly making it easier for the government or some other legal adversary to obtain the information, Dixon [executive director of the World Privacy Forum] said.

If the medical records aren't protected by HIPAA, the information conceivably also could be used for marketing purposes.

Do you want Google pushing customized ads tailored to your medical conditions? How about fine grained targeted marketing like pushing diet pills to Type 2 diabetes patients who happen to wander into a cookie store with their Google phone?

We've long recognized the distinction between the public sphere and the private spheres. The Internet is blurring some of that distinction and any move to use private health data for public commerce could cross a line that we'll regret. Our society has evolved quite nicely without Big Brother, we don't need it now.