it all depend how far they go.

Threatens the very fiber of what it means to be American.

Really there is not a constitutional right to privacy. I think that we deserve some privacy, but why worry if you have nothing to hide?

Say what you want about cholesterol; the above example is the next century's silent killer. No one's ever been overly fond of insurance companies in the past, but the decisions they'll end up making based upon underhanded digital espionage will put them right up there with day-care arsonists as villains. Think your next employer hasn't a clue as to your family's bouts with hereditary diseases? Take into account the brevity of the interview and the pile of bills on your kitchen table in the coming months, and chances are that outfit got hold of any number of medical profiles and decided it wasn't worth the potential increase in said outfit's insurance premiums (and if you think that label won't follow you, e-mail me for the number of a good therapist). How will this worldwide catastrophe be stopped? By letting it deluge the corporate collective with wave after violent wave of lawsuits, to be followed by the stringent clean-up efforts of local, state, federal, and international law. Before medical breakthroughs can handle these issues, people will have to slap hard to be heard, and they need to be made aware of digital discrimination with all possible dispatch. UPDATE: It's starting already, with the high-profile case of the NBA's Eddy Curry and the DNA request made by his former team, the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls didn't want the risk of a lawsuit (in case Mr. Curry died on the court from his predisposition towards a congenital heart condition), so they traded him to the New York Knicks. He's not out of the woods yet, though; because his medical status leaked out, it's nigh impossible for him to be insured through the NBA (and anywhere else, I'd imagine), so he'll probably end up done, career-wise. I predict many a smoking abacus before it all hits the fan.

I think that the information that is stored about any citizen in places like the US and the UK most probably exceeds what any of us thinks. We just don't think about the information we happily and ignorantly hand over. And its not just the government that has it either, your supermarket will monitor what you do and then will use the information to tailor their services to their customers. Sounds crazy doesn't it?

The worst thing about this is how innocuous (sp?) most of it seems. You sign up for the club card at the store for the savings.. (they know what you buy and how often you buy gas) you give your zipcode at the hardware store (They may not know who you are, but they know where) and how many people give up their SSN's without ever thinking about WHY?? EVERYBODY pulls a credit report now, from the casino you gamble at (I work at one, I know) to your landlord) and you medical profile....who knows who sees that? And now the FBI can get a tap on your phone for suspected activities, without ever going public. As for those who say go cash, anymore, that's to cut yourself off from most of society. Not to mention, you actually stand out even more. Privacy is largely a thing of the past, sad to say, and I'm not sure that, post 9/11, there's anything most of us can do about it. Big brother is watching, and you should be afraid.....very afraid.

Darn, they'll know you've all been looking at porn. Don't lie, thats all you care about. You're all pissy because your secret porn habit gets exposed! UPDATE: Like it or not, I'm more right than any of you care to admit. You should have seen my brother when I hit him with this one!

This is annoying and causing some problems,but it is hardly worthy of the top ten,let alone top 5 ! It is a good reason to start using CASH again,since that saves you the interest that credit companies rook you over and also keeps your private information private.DO NOT let anyone ever convince us that cash should be done away with- electricity is capricious and computers are very over-rated.How many times have you been held up at the supermarket because the computer is down ?! In the old days- a store could ostensibly stay operational even if there was a blackout.The staff could actually add and subtract without the help of electronic registers.Credit Cards,and many things sold to us as conveniences are almost always a nuisance in the end.

We need laws like the ones in Europe where the individual owns the information about them.