>>>>After hearing the kind of stuff Choice Point has on people it probably needs two fronts - what the government can do/have and what "private enterprise" can do/have, as well as when the twain can meet.
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>>>There are already different constraints as to what the government and private concerns can have. We use social security numbers all the time to determine who we are dealing with, but in private industry that is a no-no.
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>>It's supposed to be a no-no for everyone. The original charter of the Social Service Administration specified that SSN's were strictly for internal identification purposes. We can sure kiss that one goodbye.
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>And the original constitution didn't allow an income tax!
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>>Another privacy intrusion that has become commonplace is for merchants to ask for your phone number when you use a credit card. By law that is none of their business, but try to stop them. I always say no and generally the cashier enters a generic number such as the area code followed by 555-1212. These transactions probably get passed on to some government agency [g].
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>I like the telemarketers who ask you all those personal questions, I usually start asking them for their driver's license number, phone number, how much they weigh, etc. they usually get it and hang up.

I usually take them with a grain of salt, unless they're REALLY pushy. For example, the ones who start right out saying, "I'm going to be sending you...." I just say, "No, you're not" and hang up.

The cleverest approach I have heard is a woman who taught her 2 year old son to say "OK" every 10 seconds. When a telemarketer called she would hand the kid the phone.