You Don't HAVE No Steenkin' Privacy!

Jessica tells it the way it really is:

Of course, the media use data mining databases all the time. The databases used by the media are not available to just anyone off the street. You have to demonstrate you are a company or law enforcement. The databases cross publicly available databases and information. Who intrudes on the privacy of Americans more than our news media?

It's an amazingly powerful search tool. When I was a reporter, there were unlisted telephone numbers in it all the time. I have no idea where they get all this stuff, but it's amazingly precise. The database tells you who's lived at the same address as any given person in the last 10 years or so, along with cars they drive and telephone numbers. It does not provide social security numbers. I once found a man who had been put up for adoption 25 years ago and who had changed his name twice. Found him in 5 minutes. Once tracked down the sister of a post office shooter in New Orleans just by running the shooter's name.

Granted, that's different from what the NSA is doing: Getting phone records from the telephone companies. But there is a certain analogy - it's "investigative intelligence" one might say - and the media might stop being so shocked about lawful intrusion into the privacy concerns of average Americans when they use databases to intrude into people's privacy all the time, and for far less important reasons than national security.

Check it out. It's called Autotrack.

On occasion, I've wondered how the blazes the MSM finds out that 'Jack is Jill's brother' and interviews Jill about Jack's latest escapade. Now I know. It is NOT "journalistic digging."