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Total Information Awareness, For One
Jason writes "This guy has created his own TIA program for his electronic transactions around DC. He writes, 'Conceptually, I decided to create a personal TIA program to track my own electronic movements... and to document every single electronically-recorded transaction I've made.' A small vignette into what could be done with your electronic droppings."
There's more info on LifeLog here and here.
nms
Click on the "Click for PNG link".
Then click on some of the icons on his map. It's more involved than you think. Scanned receipts from that location, including what was purchased, and how much he paid for it. It's not just a map, and it certainly wasn't generated by Quicken or MS Money, unless those two programs have gotten significantly more powerful than I thought.
If you live outside the USA, you should take special interest in [former TIA chief] [and felon] John Poindexter's recent open letter in the New York Times.
It's pretty handwavy, but he makes a couple of interesting claims:
responsible for discovering what is possible; other agencies will be
responsible for determining its correct use. I'm all for free exploration,
but this is calculatedly naive. I think this project in particular was
created with use in mind, and I think tax funded research should reflect
what taxpayers feel is in their best interest.
American hotspot, claiming that American financial data isn't analyzed).
I doubt this*, but even if it's true, citizens abroad should be letting their governments know about how they feel about the US accessing their data.
*: DARPA funds a lot of research into how to appease American privacy laws while conducting surveillance.
From my unreliable, tertiary sources I believe that the UK has 6 months for standard data (eg; if you dont use your blockbuster card for 6 months they delete you from their database), CCTV in towns is removed after 2 days (if you ever need the police to review some, or want to get a copy then you need to be quick or you are out of luck), credit card data I am not sure about, though banking data disappears from my online statement every quarter and credit card data disappears after a year. One cant help but assume that my data is sitting in some offsite backup somewhere though. All this is covered under the UK's Data Protection Act 1998, in which an individual can demand a company or govt agency to give them all the data they want about themselves (for a fee of no more than inflation-adjusted 15 GBP), and if they do not, or are found to be withholding data, they are subject to a fine of something like 30000 GBP per instance.
Warhammer forums
A party
How did you get invited to the party?
Did someone telephone you? Then the gov't has a record of the time the call was made and the phone numbers that it was made between.
Did someone send you an invitation in the mail? Then the post office OCR'd the envelope and they do retain the images on file for some time.
Did someone e-mail you? Then DCS-1000 read the invitation as it travelled from the party host to you.
How did you visit your parents?
Did you drive a motor vehicle? Then your license plate was scanned.
Did you buy any gasoline along the way?
Did you pass over any toll bridges with an easy-pass device?
How do you keep in touch with your friend? Telephone, e-mail, snail mail? Then the DHS has an edge from you to your friend in their affinity map.
How did your friend buy the book? Barnes and Noble keeps track of which customers buy which book, you know.
This information breaks into the news from time to time. During the anthrax letter scare, some newspapers noticed the techniques that the Post Office used to trace letters -- techniques that they use on every letter, because the P.O. used them to trace letters that they had no reason to be suspicious of until after the letters were delivered. Similarly, Ken Starr subpoena'ed Monica Lewinsky's book purchases at Barnes and Noble -- and it turned out that Barnes Noble *did* have those records.
The story you're referring to is Isaac Asimov's "The Dead Past". Google keywords asimov "dead past" [including quotation marks] for pointers and reviews. Add keyword cigarette for DMCA-violation.