WHO ARE YOU?

SPECIAL POST

With the recent revelation that Obama has data miners putting together a demographic data base of Americans for his use after he leaves office, this is a good time to reexamine just what kind of a mess our computers are getting us into, aside from hacking and such.  

I've published this information before, but it bears repeating.  Let's start with your Social Security Number, the one that we were told would never be used for the purposes of identification.   Virtually every bank, credit card company, employer, utility, cable provider, car lot, health provider, insurance company and the kid who mows your lawn wants to know your SSN.  They all assign you an account number, but when you call them to discuss your account, the first thing they ask you for is your SSN.  

So, it stands to reason that any data collection agency or firm can extract information from all of those firms and agencies listed above simply by searching data files using your SSN.  Then, one can easily determine how much you are worth, how much you owe and how timely you pay your bills, how much electricity and water you use, who you work for, what programs you watch, what kind of car you own, who your doctor is and what ails you, what kind of insurance you have and in what amounts your life policies are, and how long you let your grass grow before it gets mowed.    

Now, they're adding the ability to get your educational records, your race, your ethnicity, your sex, your religion... even if you're having an extra-marital affair and with whom.  And, they assign different codes to each attribute, so that along with your social security number, there is another set of numbers assigned to you which can be reversed so that anyone with a computer can find out anything about you.  

In the meanwhile, the nation has become obsessed with feeding computers.  Did you know that, by law, doctors now spend an hour or two a day entering information about you into their computer files?  No wonder they don't have time to see patients anymore, but on those rare occasions when they do, you have to grab them by the throat in order to distract them from their laptops.    

Privacy?  Forget it.  

That's MY AMERICAN OPINION, respectfully submitted by 123-45-6789-14-A-349-Z4-132-PP.