The world has changed in such ways, we are told, so that privacy has become an unaffordable luxury.

Maybe so. But in a democracy, even a representative democracy, making decisions that give up individual privacy should only be made with the will and consent of the people and then, if at all, begrudgingly, cautiously and only after thorough public debate.

Funny thing about privacy, you will not find mention of it in our Bill of Rights or the Constitution. That's likely because it wasn't much of an issue for the Founding Fathers. That time was long before the information age.

But we have in North Dakota, and other American places, developed a deep comfort with and an attachment to privacy. Keep out. No transporting.

American privacy has run smack into the war on terror. American privacy has gotten tangled up in the government and business databases. American privacy has been taken for a ride by the Internet.

This editorial isn't really about gathering intelligence for the war on terror; however, it's the war on terror that has given the issue heat.

Especially recently, when Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, suggested that privacy no longer means anonymity, and that it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communication and financial information.

Kerr's observations are cause for concern.

Anonymity isn't such a big deal, unless you are talking secret ballots.

But counting on government and business to safeguard our private communications and financial information just doesn't make it. All too frequently we are reading about laptop computers belonging to this government agency or other, containing personal information of citizens, being lost. We are urged to protect our identity and the strings of numbers related to Social Security and bank accounts for fear of theft.

Perhaps we need more protection of our privacy, not less.

Some people believe that we should live a life that's open. Others feel privacy is an illusion. And others protect their privacy at all costs.

These different views of privacy are individual and personal, and don't much fit a one-size-fits-all federal law.

In addition, when government asks us to trust it when it comes to privacy, we should be on guard.

Changing what America believes about privacy would call for a fundamental change. And we should not go easily down this path.