By JENNIFER PELTZ
Associated Press

NEW YORK - Discussions of privacy rights in the digital era should distinguish between such confidential data as medical records and information that might be personal but is easy to find out, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hon. Antonin Scalia said Wednesday.

Considering every fact about someone's life private is "extraordinary," he said, noting that data such as addresses have long been discernible, even if technology has made them easier to find.

"Every single datum about my life is private? That's silly," Scalia told a conference hosted by the Institute of American and Talmudic Law, which is affiliated with the Orthodox Jewish Chabad Lubavitch movement and studies and compares the American and Jewish legal systems.

The conference came as privacy advocates in the U.S. and Europe marked International Privacy Day, spotlighting what they call the problem of protecting personal information at a time when technology can pull together previously disparate pieces of an individual's history and target advertising by logging a computer user's online travels.

Scalia said he was largely untroubled by such Internet tracking.

"I don't find that particularly offensive," he said. "I don't find it a secret what I buy, unless it's shameful."

There's some information that's private, he added, "but it doesn't include what groceries I buy."

Data such as drug prescriptions probably should be protected, he said, suggesting that areas off-limits to data gatherers could simply be listed for legal purposes.

Various existing federal and state privacy laws do govern the collection and use of certain types of personal information, ranging from video-rental records to cable television subscribers' identities. Some privacy advocates are pushing for a broader legal framework of data privacy rights and information gatherers' responsibilities. They say piecemeal protections have a difficult time keeping up with advances in technology.

"It's becoming hard to draw those lines when it's so easy to aggregate data," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. He was not at Wednesday's panel.

Among Scalia's fellow panelists Wednesday were rabbis who examined how the 3,300-year-old body of Jewish law governs the use of information - in rules against spreading gossip, for example.

"It really demonstrated the relevance of the (legal) systems to speak to one another," said Rabbi Shlomo Yaffe, the institute's dean.