Who Watches the Watchmen?

Really, this is any surprise?  Any time any organization collects information on people, there will always be employees of that orgnization (usually the folks sitting at the terminals each day, but not always) who will sift through that information to see what it says about their current significant other. Or their family.  Or their friends. Or their boss. Or that annoying neighbor across the street. Or that SOB congressman. Or their minister. Or that hot starlet they saw a picture of in People.  It will happen with spy agencies, with credit agencies, with police agencies, with HR departments, with payroll departments, with anyone who collects personal information with the big label of "private" or "confidential." It will happen with paper files, and it will happen (more easily) with electronic files. It will happen however strict and stringent the controls against it happening are (and often they are less strict and stringent than they are presented as being, coughNSAcough), and they will always happen more often than the cases that have been caught, which is more than the cases that are reported publicly when someone is pinned down and forced to testify about it (or wants to make an example of someone to dissuade others from doing so).

Every. Time. It will happen. It has happened, and it will happen again.  It's human nature.  We're social animals, and we're nosy.  And even if I am trustworthy, we all know someone who just can't resist knowing — especially if there's a personal stake  in it.

And that's not necessarily a reason to suggest that personal data cannot or should not be collected by any of the groups involved.  But it is a reason to not let anyone pretend that the data collected cannot or will not be misused sometimes, and maybe to make the controls a bit more public, and the span of information a bit more restricted. And to reduce by a few pinches of salt anyone from one of these agencies and swears up and down and left and right that it cannot happen and will never happen again, so please fill in these additional fields and authorize the collection of just a bit more information on everyone ….