"Twenty-four hours a day, Acxiom electronically gathers and sorts information about 196 million Americans. Credit card transactions and magazine subscriptions. Telephone numbers and real estate records. Car registrations and fishing licenses. Consumer surveys and demographic details.
What Acxiom does is perfectly legal – bringing together an array of facts from scattered sources. But the phenomenon known as "data warehousing" or "datamining" represents yet another example of how traditional notions of personal privacy have become obsolete, outstripped by technology's ability to peer into personal lives.
In a flash, data warehouses can assemble electronic dossiers that give marketers, insurers and in some cases law enforcement a stunningly clear look into your needs, lifestyle and spending habits. And without aggressive action to preempt the companies, individuals have no control over facts that are gathered and disseminated about them."