No Place to Hide, Robert O'Harrow

BusinessWeek has a review of Robert O'Harrow's No Place to Hide. The book looks at the surveillance society America has become, since 9/11. Not only is the government looking, checking, screening and handling quite a bit of information in secret -- so is private industry. Private industry has been doing some of that for a while, but now, in partnership with the government, their actions have been legitimize for the greater glory of fighting terror. Some private industries track more than just your financial trail -- they're "now able to provide lists of people who take Prozac for depression, believe in the Bible, gamble online, or buy sex toys." If you're gay, you may be worried about "the Gay America Megafle," containing some 700,000 names -- and a company named ChoicePoint, brags about its 250 terabytes of data on 220 million people.

Should you be worried? Let's see: with governments, at least there is some degree of transparency, some degree of accountability to the public -- with private industry? The public doesn't know what information they have, what it is being used for, who it is being shared with, and -- if you want to know what they have on you, it's none of your business. They don't have to divulge anything. Worried about Total Information Awareness? How about Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness? What the government can't accomplish alone, because they're at the mercy of the public, they're soliciting industry to complete. Should you be worried? Damn right you should be worried. You don't know what profile your data is painting of you out there. You don't know what misinformation may be contributing to you being singled out as the next potential terrorist.