It is, however worth at least considering restrictions on continuously following a person in public places and reporting all their observed activities to a third party.
Of course there are practical limitations on that kind of physical surveillance. It's expensive, tends to attract attention, and even nation states can only do it to a few people at a time. Information technology allows it to scale to almost everyone, almost all the time, for a small fraction of a corporate budget.
Perhaps it's worth at least considering restrictions on that.
> It is, however worth at least considering restrictions on continuously following a person in public places and reporting all their observed activities to a third party.
I don’t see any difference between online “tracking” and real world stalking. If some one was following you every where you went taking notes on everything you did, interrupting you and preventing you from actually doing what your were actually wanting to do, you’d be able to have the police intercede in your behalf. Only now we think it is different because “on a computer”.???
OK but that's the sites themselves doing it. If every shop puts an annoying greeter on the door or something, that's not something you would call the police about.
You are the culmination of your life's experiences. Going by your definition, one could infer an individual has zero intrinsic ownership of any non-health data. Which I categorically object to.
You have ownership over your own memories and records.
Other people also own their own memories and records - some of which may be about you.
At least, this is how it was for most of human history.
Now some people think they should be able to demand everyone destroy records about them. If it was possible, no doubt they'd also demand people destroy any memories about them as well.
When I walk down the street and sometime sees me go by, those aren't my photons they caught. By analogy, same with my browsing history.