A commentary on how widespread personal data collection has become and the need for legal protection of all this data that refers to us and our lives.

A mediocre piece on an important topic. Advocates legislation without sufficiently explaining why a market solution isn't the right answer.

An article that is more plea than commentary. Nevertheless, there is no doubt the data that have been collected and available about our behavior, habits, likes-dislikes, buying patterns, political and religious views would shock us. Data are the gold of the information age. Collected by a plethora of sources and centralized into data bases easily accessed by those who want it. What's on the horizon is even more scary: transceiver chips implanted into our brains at birth and accessible via satellites into huge data banks. Then information can travel both ways.

No sources and little evidence, but lots of food for thought -- for example: "If the government wants to investigate us, they're more likely to go through our data than they are to search our homes; for a lot of that data, they don't even need a warrant."