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Privacy has been called "the civil rights issue of the information age."
Americans
enjoy unlimited benefits from new technologies in a wired world. But those wires
send information in two directions, and the access to our personal data has never
been more open for abuse. It's not the just the Internet that erodes our privacy.
In dozens, possibly hundreds, of every-day activities, you leave a trail of who
you are. As technology brings us closer together, the fragments of information
about you are becoming much easier to piece together, revealing the most intimate
details of your life.
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When the U.S. Supreme Court
and Congress have taken privacy into consideration, it has usually lost out to
other interests.
 Americans have been rewarded for giving up their personal privacy. In a society where the rights of the many outweigh the rights of the few, a more-secure and safer America has emerged.
 The European Union's "Privacy Directive" provides a model for how the United States might protect the online privacy of Americans.
 Many employers say existing laws are forcing them to monitor the activities of their employees.
 Medical records may be the most private of personal data. That's why so many people want yours.
 When the Federal government started issuing Social Security cards five decades ago, some people worried the Social Security number would evolve into an all-purpose, national identification system. They were right.
 It's remarkably easy for someone to steal your identity, and it's difficult to get it back. It's a growing crime that law-enforcement agencies are
unwilling or unprepared to stop it.
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