The debate over ID cards in the UK is based on the premise that governments should not be allowed to garner and hold information about individuals in such detail. In practice of course they don't need to introduce the ID cards to get that sort of information anyway. Given their powers to sequester mobile phone records, ISP records etc, they already have a huge amount of information available to them, much of it voluntarily provided by us.
This article (found via Rebecca's Pocket) shows how. It also seems to show that in big brother land what is sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander - but then who expects politicians, whether public or corporate to apply to themselves the same rules they want to impose on us?
This comment is interesting too - offered to the California Senate Judiciary Committee by Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
...although Google has is held in high esteem by the public as a good corporate citizen, past performance is no guarantee of future behavior -especially following Google's IPO when the company will have a legal duty to maximize shareholder wealth.
This seems to me to be remarkably similar in its concerns to this post by Guy Herbert on Samizdata that I have already referred to earlier. The Internet has the capacity to deliver detailed information at an unprecedented level of detail. Unlike organisations like the ASI and pimpers for it like Alex Singleton, I see no distinction between public and private sector government. In the UK and the US at least governments are so intertwined with the big corporations that any distinction becomes irrelvant. If the corporates don't use the power they have for their own ends, governments have the capacity to seize it for theirs- and if the capacity is there they will use it eventually.
The 'military-industrial complex' so beloved of 60s militants is now the reality.
