The FBI has an extensive data mining system purportedly for the purpose of finding terrorists. Stored in it is government and some private company data available for purchase or gotten through the implicit threat of being asked by the same entity that regulates your business:
A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, declassified documents obtained by Wired.com show.
But remember it is for terrorists:
Conventional criminal cases have also benefited. In a 2004 case against a telemarketing company called Gecko Communications, NSAC used its batch-searching capability to provide prosecutors with detailed information on 192,000 alleged victims of a credit scam.
Oh… maybe not then.
But no worries, this is all under the oversight of Congress.
This should be stopped, immediately.
It may catch a minor terrorist or two but it shan’t be long til a corrupt Congress turns it on the rest of us.