privacy and the patriot act

Worried about losing your privacy because of the Patriot Act? I shouldn't worry if I were you. You don't have as much privacy as you think.

If I had a little time to kill, here are just a few of the things I can find out through open public records, just by knowing your name and generally where you live:

• Your address;
• Your phone number, even if it's unlisted;
• Your party affiliation;
• When you last voted, and how often you have voted;
• How much your house is worth;
• How much you paid for it, and when;
• Your entire driving history within this state, including tickets you pleaded guilty to and how much you had to pay in fines;
• The make, model and year of any cars registered in your name, as well as the license plate numbers;
• Your driver's license number;
• Your credit record, for a modest fee;
• If you're a government employee, I also can find out how much you earn, and get a copy of your employment contract if you have one;
• When you were married;
• Your wife's maiden name;
• The names of your children and your licensed dog or cat, and when and where your children were born;
• Your birthday; and
• Your parents' names, marriage date and the names and birthdates of all your siblings.

And that's just off the top of my head. Presumably I also could get your Social Security number, which would grant me access to other things not normally in the public record if I'm devious enough to know where to look. If you ever have been divorced, forget it: Your entire life is mine for the asking -- and all this is without the benefit of a single court order.

As a journalist, I get information like this as a matter of routine. Once I have your address, all I have to do is call your municipal clerk for your party affiliation. He or she will tell me if you're a registered voter, what party you belong to, and again how often you've voted. If they don't have that information -- as sometimes is the case in New Jersey -- your county clerk will have it.

If they don't give it to me, I read them the riot act over public access, and their attorneys will agree with me that they have to give it to me.

Privacy is an illusion in a free society. The government has had access to all these things, and many more, for years.

All the same, I do agree: The security bogeyman can be used to justify a lot of thought policing and other unsavory policies and practices. You don't need to look to Nazi Germany to see that, though: Just check out America in the 1950s and thank Senator McCarthy for bringing the dark side of the American psyche out into the open.

The problem isn't an erosion of privacy -- because that, frankly, doesn't exist except as an illusion -- but the genesis of an atmosphere of suspicion. And suspicion, once it begins to grow, starts finding balrogs in every innocent woodpile. In some Christian circles the fact that I have a translation of the Quran on the bookshelf near my Bible would make my faith questionable; in the hands of an overzealous guardian of our freedom, it could be the first nail in my coffin.