Private eyes (clap! clap!) They're watching you

What does the government do when it cannot legally collect information on you? It turns to the private sector, of course!

A government proposal for a national ID card, for example, was shot down by civil liberties groups and Congress for being too intrusive and prone to abuse. And Congress voted to cancel funding for John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness, a national database that would have tracked citizens' private transactions such as Web surfing, bank deposits and withdrawals, doctor visits, travel itineraries and visa and passport applications.

But this hasn't stopped the government from achieving the same ends by buying similar data from private aggregators like Acxiom, ChoicePoint, Abacus and LexisNexis. According to the ACLU, ChoicePoint's million-dollar contracts with the Justice Department, Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies let authorities tap into its billions of records to track the interests, lifestyles and activities of Americans.

And since private compaines are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, there is no real way to discover what the government has learned about you.

There is always a tinge of paranoia to the whole thing, but then again there really is no reason for the governemnt to be able to easily acquire how much you spent at Best Buy yesterday or whether you are taking scuba lessons without a reason for them to do so.

Want more info? Head to the ACLU. They encourage public action to stop companies from sharing their data. Find out what you can do there.