Growing up I went to the store with a pocket of change or, later a checkbook. Times have changed. Now we carry our personal identity with us, and that's enough. What makes this possible is a vast array of computers, databases full of personal information and a network to make that information available to a merchant, upon request. Now, with a new level of international insecurity, we have allowed the government to increasingly collect and track personal information on each of us. This includes, but is not limited to:
Race and sex
Phone records
Travel history through cell phone records
Credit history
Clubs and organization memberships
Political party and political action group memberships and donations
Income history
Employment history
Personal identity for example fingerprints, dna, SSN, drivers license
Family of origin and heredity, family health history
Our children’s history and activities
Our Internet activity
Most of these are currently part of the public record, some are currently unlawful to distribute – but recently several laws have been rewritten or circumvented
The technology is available to make these records accessible, easy to record and distribute. Data mining is being used to cross reference these disparate databases and assimilate information and patterns that can’t be seen from any one source.
"The American people should never assume that we will always have a government of the people..."
I have these questions. Is there really a right to privacy and what is inside that boundary? If we give up liberties and let our government collect knowledge about our personal activities, goals and finances, do we trust that such knowledge will not be misused by some future government? In a world, increasingly driven by economics, how will the information be used to manipulate the free market, or gain political leverage? What political or economic power could be wielded from the control of that ever-changing database and what would a country, corporation or individual be willing to give for access to it? Who will be the authority that controls access to the database? What system, such as a constitution, will control the authority that controls access to the database?
Those citizens who are willing, through their silence, to give up privacy and liberty, because they have nothing to hide, may find a liability in simply being themselves.
To date the will of the American people has shown little resolve to slow this affront to privacy and the collection of more power by those who already posses the most. Rights given up a little at a time define the way we will live in the future. The American people should never assume that we will always have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. And “freedom and justice for all” will be an empty promise and an unfulfilled dream.