Big Brother

In this age of information, personal information (information about a person) is becoming at once more prevalent and more valuable. Information about the average person in the United States is entered into 17 databases (figure from November 1995) including:

• Credit card
• Bank
• DMV
• Store (from store creditcards or credit card payments for goods)
• Federal, state & local government
• Magazine subscription lists

Using these databases, anyone interested (e.g., the Direct Marketing Association, the FBI, etc.) can determine a huge amount about a person by indexing this information according to (e.g.):

• where a person lives
• what magazines she reads
• what stores she frequents and products she purchases
• where she goes on vacation

Further, anyone participating on the Internet is also noted on an uncountable number of databases, including ones such as:

• Alta Vista (web pages)
• I/Pro (user statistics)
• www.dejanews.com (newsgroups)
• reference.com (mailing lists)

This speed, accuracy, and quantity of this information collection is increasing at an alarming rate. Truely, Big Brother is nigh.

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