What we’ve moved away from is this idea in a sense you should only target those that you have reasonable suspicion of and we’ve moved to a point where we’re saying everybody is suspicious and we have a right to target everybody.

Every trip you take in the last eight weeks has been recorded in a database. The time, the start, and finish points all link directly to your name and address.

We’re living in a world where more and more information and data is created about us. Where we pass through sensors or cameras and computers and we buy things and we enter places and we use electronic key cards. And each of those pieces of information might be harmless on its own that you were at this place at this time. But when you bring each of those pieces of information together they’re like pixels. You can form a very high resolution image of somebody’s life to a degree that is really quite spooky and I think that most people that if they knew the extent of the possibilities in this area would be quite alarmed.

The telecom giant Verizon revealing today that since the start of 2005 it has, on 720 separate occasions, turned over its customers phone numbers to federal agents who had neither a court order or a warrant.

The Bush administration currently suing the telecom giants in order to keep them quiet. And who should we see about granting them immunity from that? Over at the judiciary committee chairman John Conyers trying to learn more in the wake of this weeks other warrantless surveillance bombshell, allegations that the administration’s program appears to have started 6 months BEFORE the 9/11 attacks.

It’s ChoicePoints business to know about you. The company maintains a database that has information on virtually every U.S. citizen. Its trove of personal data and its estimated 17 billion records includes phone numbers and addresses, credit reports and property records, bank accounts, insurance policies and social security numbers. It sells this information to major corporations, no profit organizations and the government.

But in addition to gathering sorting and cataloging information from public records about virtually every American, Acxiom has another business. Its acres of computers store private information about us. Information that is gathered by the nations banks, insurers, credit card issuers, retailers, car makers, and telecom companies. Almost every time you make a purchase, whether buying a book or going to the supermarket or booking a trip, there’s a record of your transaction. A record that’s kept by the company you did business with. Using a combination of this personal information along with its vast storehouse of public data, Acxiom’s computers are able to paint a remarkably detailed portrait of many Americans.

The law that regulates electronic surveillance…the last major restructuring of that law took place in 1986. We need a regulatory infrastructure to protect privacy and right now we don’t quite have one to match the new technologies that we have. The public needs to be putting pressure on state and federal legislators to do something about this. Its important that the public become aware of what’s going on so its voice can be heard.