answer:I no longer spend time worrying about things I can’t do anything about. I try to leave the smallest footprint wherever I go, but it is increasingly futile for the reasons you listed above. I don’t like any of it, but there isn’t a thing I can do about most of it. I mostly run with cash because it’s the way things are here. My travels are well documented, as is the movement of my vessel. My cell phone, which I rarely use, is basically a beat-up old throw-away that I buy minutes for on a monthly basis from a local company in a woman’s name in Mexico—it was a gift from her, a good friend, so she could call me now and then. I have a very small footprint on the net: No Facebook, no Twitter Account. There are very few photographs of me on the net, the latest being from 2008 or 9. I purposely keep it that way. My boat is registered in my name in Florida. I own no other property. I’m a nobody. My opinions aren’t important to any authority. I break very few laws. Those are my best defenses from incursions into my private life. There is no way around it. It’s the world we’ve allowed to evolve around us, through bad behavior by some and lack of interest in protecting our own rights by the rest. There is much less of this surveillance in the developing world. It’s expensive and only the wealthiest countries can carry this off effectively.