[FYI] Big Brother Privatized: What They (Don't) Know About You

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,43743,00.html

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What They (Don't) Know About You  

By Julia Scheeres  

2:35 a.m. May 11, 2001 PDT  

When Richard Smith got his FBI file, he learned a lot of interesting 
things about himself.  

He found out that he had died in 1976 and that he may have previously 
been married to a woman named Mary. He also discovered that he may be 
known as "Ricky Smith" or "Rickie Smith" -- aliases he shares with a 
couple of convicts doing hard time in Texas.  

En fin, Smith -- who is the chief technology officer of the Privacy 
Foundation -- found that his FBI file contained more errors than 
correct data.  

"I was kinda curious about what the FBI thought about me," said 
Smith. For $20, he got a copy of his file from Choicepoint, a data 
aggregator in Georgia that sells millions of dossiers on private 
citizens to both the government and private business.  

[...]

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