Privacy technologies, particularly anonymous e-mail and value transfer systems, become commonplace not merely by consumer adoption. The networked nature of these systems requires organizational and institutional adoption. In most such cases, institutions decide the parameters of new consumer services, then market those services, giving consumers, at best, veto power over the shape of those services. In the case of privacy technologies, the interests of privacy-preferring individuals are often directly opposed to the interests of organizations which collect personal information, either as a line of profit or as a regulatory requirement. Therefore consumers are unlikely to be offered privacy technologies even to veto them. Privacy activists are left with the question of how to organize consumer demand to influence the planning and development of these systems.

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