Consumers’ concern about online privacy are at all-time high due to the emerging technologies – for instance, e-commerce and mobile devices– which collects a big chunk of consumer data, the Pew Research study says.

However, people who worry about “privacy eroding into the river and being gone forever,” added Wittes, ignore how those benefits actually increase privacy.

The rise of online sales has meant you can mail-order products that might be too embarrassing to buy in person, Wittes added. “Without looking at somebody in the eye, without confessing the interest in this subject, you get what you want.”

Because all e-books look the same on an e-reader, for instance, you can read Fifty Shades of Grey on your Kindle without shame—which may explain why the e-version of this book has outsold its printed version.

The value of the privacy of those purchases, Wittes argued, outweighs the value of the data given for them—like email, credit card numbers, browsing history, personal preferences, and location-based information.

Wittes suggested changing vocabulary that consumers use to describe the benefits they get with giving up some personal information. It’s not only “convenience,” he said, “it’s also privacy benefits.”

Joshua New, policy analyst at the Information Technology Innovation Foundation, said data collection also brings economic benefits to consumers.

He cited car insurance as an example. Instead of deciding your insurance premium based on broad factors – for instance, age, gender, neighborhood, drivers could use data to prove that they are cautious and don’t brake rapidly to get lower premiums even they are in the “high-risk section” based on traditional measurements, New said.

People who strive for online privacy should be aware that there is a cost to it. Adam Thierer, a senior research fellow at George Mason University, said it’s not impossible for people to protect their privacy if they don’t mind losing the benefits of giving up their data.

“Companies can offer paid options where user information won’t be collected,’ Thierer said. “But at the moment, I don’t think many people will pay for their privacy.”

A balance between consumer privacy and technology innovation is what the Federal Trade Commission is pursuing. Totally prohibiting data collection, which will create barriers for breakthrough innovations, is definitely not the solution.

“We should definitely limit the use of data,” said Federal Trade Commission member Maureen Ohlhausen, “but not limit the collection of data.”

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“We’re going to have to move as fast as the threat,” Dennis said. He said the government moves too slowly to capitalize the U.S. role as an international leader in technology. The U.S. has vast amounts of data, he said, and analysts need to be able to understand it so they can identify potential threats indicated by the patterns.

As the innovation director of Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, Dennis highlighted a few key pattern analytic programs DHS is working at a “Big Data” conference last week. Among the programs are natural disaster responses and cross-language border security data.

Last July, DHS Undersecretary Tara O’Toole, who heads science and technology efforts, detailed the urgency of improving such software to a Senate hearing of the Committee of Homeland Security and Government Affairs.

“Over the past three years alone, we have witnessed several highly complex and consequential disasters ranging from the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil spill, to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and Super Storm Sandy,” O’Toole said. “Our nation must improve its capacity to predict, prevent, and rapidly respond to and recover from such catastrophes.”

By hiring people who understand the data and how to use it, Dennis told the gathering of industry professionals, the Department of Homeland Security could better hone responses to natural disasters and protect the borders.

“You got to have the people who know how to work this technology,” Dennis said. “Not people with badges and guns.”

At the committee hearing last year, O’Toole told the Senate committee that continuing to attract these types of employees would “require reasonably predictable funding levels, the ability to recruit and retain specialized expertise as needed, and congressional and departmental support of the S&T mission.”

Dennis told the conference that all the programs under DHS science and technology were vetted for privacy protections and that certain types of data were heavily regulated and could not be comingled.

As an example of the enormity of the data, he outlined the job facing DHS every day at U.S. airports — 1.8 million passengers moving through 448 airports. DHS places an emphasis on perfecting name-matching software for airport security because “shaking down the wrong people at the airport is bad press for DHS,” he said.