Take the Fourth (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781452089294)

Buying gummy bears and a porn magazine plus living alone could classify you as a pedophile. Living in 90210 and working within the fortune 500 could classify you as upper class. What you buy, where you live, what you do, who you know, all creates a demographical portrait of you as an individual. As that individual you can be compared to the various groups within society deemed necessary by insurance and marketing companies, financial institutions, law enforcement, and even the government. Welcome to the information age where even the most mundane or trivial data stored on a computer can and will be used against you in a court of law. Everyday your rights granted to you by the 4th amendment are violated without your consent. Through the Patriot Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and a slew of others laws on the books, your rights to your own information are being stripped away. Your data, whether private or public, is searched for analysis, is searched for segregation, is searched for probable cause, again, all without your knowledge. Your information is constantly being seized for your potential as a Nike sneaker wearer, a food stamp user, or even a would-be killer. Both government and business think as long as you are a law abiding citizen, how they use your information should be of no concern. You should be concerned, you should be worried for in this day and age, information is money, it's power, and those who control the power, the information, control you.