Collective Intelligence... How Private is your digital Information?

Electronic banking, digital medical records keeping, e-shopping, online or elearning, electronic tax filing, Social Networks... these are but a few of the digitals processes that we are using in our daily lives. But, are these safe, are we leaving behind a trail of information, “a digital footprint”?
Are we closer to George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen eighty-four”, where he states that "Big Brother is watching you".
John Markoff in his article “You’re Leaving a Digital Trail. What About Privacy?” (New York Times November 19th) describes a project from M.I.T. were: “Mr. Brown and about 100 other students living in Random Hall at M.I.T. have agreed to swap their privacy for smartphones that generate digital trails to be beamed to a central computer. group of M.I.T students.”
This article offers a glimpse in the new field referred as “collective intelligence” where “The students’ data is but a bubble in a vast sea of digital information being recorded by an ever thicker web of sensors, from phones to GPS units to the tags in office ID badges, that capture our movements and interactions. Coupled with information already gathered from sources like Web surfing and credit cards, the data is the basis for an emerging field called collective intelligence.”
“You’re Leaving a Digital Trail. What About Privacy?”