This is very disturbing. It's bad enough when government agencies gather information on citizens. Government agencies are accountable to Congressional oversight. Private companies are not. More and more, private companies are doing things that should be restricted to governments.

Private Eye

Privacy and civil liberties advocates have battled the government for years over alleged violations of privacy laws and the Fourth Amendment. But those statutes never foresaw that privately run corporations would have more power to know the details of people's lives than government. Bush administration officials stress that privacy sits at the center of all of their homeland security initiatives. But they repeatedly warn of the imminent threat of terrorism, and depict likely attackers as shadowy and difficult to understand.

[more]

  thanks to Yolanda Flanagan