Well yeah. All they need to do is search the IRS records. Of course that would leave out all the politicians..

That is not true. It is very far from true, for a great number of reasons far beyond the scope of a reply in a blog. Just a brief description of a few.

1. Statistics. A large database (the UK keeps people on the database even if never charged with a crime; the police arrest people just to be allowed to take DNA and then keep it) distorts the statistics. The probability of a false conviction rises well beyond a linear relationship with the size of teh database.

2. Coincidence. So I have visited the crime scene, or dribbled on an item that ends up there. My DNA is there. Maybe I also had opportunity and motive.

3. Simple framing. I sup a pint of old ale at my favourite pub. Someone who stands to gain by taking me and another person out of the picture takes the glass, kills that third party in a location I have never visited and leaves the glass there.

4. Advanced framing. It is now possible in any well-equipped university to make a DNA sequence that will match any chosen database entry. So with the stolen pint glass or even just the data from the police computer they manufacture it. Carefully placed around the crime scene it will convict me. Even more clever, if you have that sort of access then get some sperm-free seminal fluid (various ways of achieving that if you have a lab to hand), add DNA sample. Rape a girl, using a condom. Murder her. Introduce that fluid as required. Conviction for certain.

Sorry but DNA databases should be strictly limited. The large UK one has not even helped significantly in fighting crime!

Do you really want the nice people from Social Services showing up on your doorstep to scold you because you spend too much money at the liquor store? Or Child Protective Services checking you out because you drink and have a 15-year-old child in the house? Or the authorities turning that information over to your church (it happened in Utah)?

Spend too much on fatty foods? The Office of Government Health Care would know. Ever buy a smutty magazine or sexy undies for the GF? Better not run for political office unless you want that to become front-page news. Better not ever buy ammunition for a gun and then go anywhere near anywhere a big shot politician might be, even if you didn’t know he was there.

Give them enough information about you and there’s just no end to the mischief they could make, especially when they tell the computer to look for patterns of behavior or crosscheck all known associates of some shady charactor. Knowledge is power indeed.

Having an affair? Do you really want your wife’s attorney ringing up his friend at the police station to download all the phone calls and videos showing what you’ve been up to? That’s just unsporting.

Then there’s the recent case of the guy who took his brand-new sports car down to the drag strip to find out what it would do. He’d barely cleared the 1/4-mile mark before the nice lady from On Star was calling to ask what the devil he thought he was doing. Want the police tapped into that system?

When you think about it, not being worried about the uses all this data could be put to shows more a lack of imagination than a clear conscience.

You want to monitor me? Well first do away with 90% of the laws on the books and have only common sense ones first. Otherwise, it wouldn’t take more than a week of spying for me to be fined or jailed for some “infraction”. Selective law enforcement then means you can fine or imprison anyone that opposes the government.

It is certain that the major political parties maintain extensive data bases on potential voters, recording information that is gleaned in the public domain (letters to the editor, mentions in the press, etc.) This then facilitates targeted campaigning, even many years after the events recorded. This is not illegal, but many folks would find it creepy.

Those countries with socialised medicine have patient health records in the government’s hands; it is impossible to imagine that this is comprehensively quarantined from other government agencies.

Any police work involves breaching privacy: just think about the undercover policeman posing as a Hell’s Angel; that is a massive breach of the club members’ privacy, many of whom are not suspected of involvement in any criminal activity. Yet most people here in Australia accept that this is legitimate. I think that the British practice of using surveillance cameras to catch and fine people who drop litter in the street is far less legitimate; but presumably the British people largely accept it, or one of the major parties would take it up as a campaign issue.

Given this pervasive surveillance already in place, both private and governmental, we are only discussing fiddling at the edges. All but a small minority accept the premise that massive amounts of data are gathered and used by various interested parties; the question is where to draw the line. And I don’t have an answer to that, just personal preferences.

In any case the rights are not reciprocal. Government can snoop on us, but are remarkably secretive about their own business. If they want to snoop on us, then they should let us snoop on them. Which they won’t.

The only reason they are getting away with all this snooping is because we foolishly imported a lot of Muslims, many of whom wish us harm.

Sure. If they scanned every cell phone call in the US and found another Fort Hood shooter their track record suggests that they’d probably hesitate to act. But let your 17-year-old daughter send a lewd photo of herself to her boyfriend and you can bet they’d be charging her with producing child pornography. And you’d better hope she didn’t use your cell phone..

Sure–”only the guilty have something to hide”, but in the face of government bureaucracy that’s rubbish. Something like 1 million Americans are on the terrorist watch list. Besides potentially making them miss a flight that could in turn cause them to miss an important business or personal engagement, we have no real idea about how these lists are being used. What is the impact on someone or their relations when it comes to applications for government jobs or benefits? Are any of these lists being fed to the IRS so they can increase auditing of the tax returns of listed individuals?

And what about unintended uses? In an age when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are denouncing anti-Obamacare protesters as “unAmerican”, DHS is warning that returning veterans might be extremists in disguise and President Obama is willing to take on Fox News (and by extension a lot of Fox’s audience), how might all this data be used in unexpected ways? Will some kind of database info or “threat scoring” be used against you in routine legal matters? In law enforcement encounters? In custody cases? To set your government healthcare premiums? If you want to protest a Wal-Mart opening up down the street? If your better-connected/less controversial neighbor wants some kind of rezoning or demarcation of your property line?

The fact of the matter is that we don’t know what is being done with this data, and the history of governmental domestic surveillance efforts is that they inevitably turn politcal (J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, McCarthyism).

So yes, innocent people are hurt by government surveillance all the time!!