As our governments prepare to give government employees
extraordinary
surveillance powers over communications, with the usual provisos
about how this is necessary to keep us and our children safe from terrorism
and how the employees in question are bound by strict codes of honour and can
be trusted to not abuse their powers,
here is a list of
top 10 police database abuses; they range from officials using confidential data to influence elections to a crooked cop scouting out "potential girlfriends" in the database, and another suspected of using the database to arrange the murder of his ex-wife.
And if the cops can do this sort of thing with their databases, what's to say the tax department, post office, ticket inspectors and other minor functionaries can be totally trusted with your email, phone and web access records?
(via rotten.com)