Big Brother: A Private-Public Partnership

Cato's Daily Dispatch links to a Washington Post story by No Place to Hide author Robert O'Harrow noting that private information databases with which government agencies contract often fall short of meeting the standards the agencies themselves are supposed to follow under the 1974 Privacy Act. An extensive Government Accountability Office report on the privacy practices of private info brokers was the subject of a Congressional hearing yesterday. Declan McCullagh wrote about the economic benefits of such private databases—and the importance of keeping them segregated from government's—in a much-discussed 2004 Reason cover story.