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I don't know what you think of Dick Morris but he is big on the whole privacy issue. I attended a talk he gave in my local town and his big issue was exactly the discussion we are having.

He believed that data privacy would be the next big issue on the scene. He was wrong, as 9/11 happened shortly after and then the economy tanked. But I think as things settle down, people will start to become concerned once again about their civil rights.

My data should be private. Fine, let the government have it for their legal purposes, but no marketing person, private detective, nosy web site database or even future employer should have access to any of it without my permission.

Ironic, indeed, that the discussion would be preempted by the event that would usher in the greatest privacy-defeating initiatives of our generation.

The problem is digital. All the information is somewhere, and the gods of the databases seethe to find it, connect it, analyze it, and, of bloody course, sell it.

If "knowledge is power," then "information is control."

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I recently was lured into a "jobs" website on the pretext of submitting my resume for a job posted on another one. As soon as I realized I'd been misled, I aborted the process of filling out their forms. I continued to get emails from that site for weeks.

Finally, I wrote them by email and asked why I was on their contact list if I'd deleted my "account?" I demanded the complete removal of my information from their databases. Believe it or not, somebody wrote back and said, "we've taken you off our email list, but we aren't allowed to remove you from our databases."

When I wrote back for a legal explanation, they stopped replying.

Now, what am I going to do, sue them? Not a chance. But maybe my son or daughter will marry a really sharp hacker...