Little Brother is watching you, too

For all the hype about Big Brother watching you, see, e.g., Watching You: Systematic Federal Surveillance of Ordinary Americans, the problem of private information gathering, while barely on the radar, is potentially more dangerous. ZabaSearch.com Free People Search, a recently launched web site, offers free personal information, including birth dates and unlisted telephone numbers. Background dossiers are available for a fee.

While at first blush this may be an outrageous invasion of privacy (and it is, really), the fact is this is just a search engine. The information it returns is information already available on the Internet on other web sites. So, while it may be both disturbing and sobering--it is for me at least--the cure is to find the original source sites and get them to remove your private information.