Doctorow: The Curious Case of Internet Privacy (Technology Review)

I dunno if I can reconcile your viewpoint, but it seems to me that you forgot one aspect in this privacy versus open-access debate: reciprocity.
Personnally, I would also accept to share some information (water metering or financial for sure, maybe not the other kind as easily :-) but with a condition: only if those accessing this information do not do such access anonymously either and reciprocally accept that their access be adequately recorded for me to know [1].

I also think that privacy-everywhere (in the computer hacker sense) may be an impairement in the long run. (Note that some law enforcement professionals even see this as a problem.) But clearly, publishing personal information without asking for anything in return (especially the identity of those who access or use the information) does not sound sensible either to me.

NB: Investigation power organization in the legal system (of democratic countries) may certainly deserve more study from our open source security community.

[1] What about "cookie exchange"? At least we could gather very precise information about companies doing users tracking on the Internet...