What’s up.

I was looping though the radio stations in my car via my favorite button ever — the “Scan” button, and inevitably stopped at GCN Station at 90.1 here in good ole Austin, Texas.  “GCN” stands for “Genesis Communication Network”.  It hosts a pretty insane cadre of “experts” who seem to believe a variety of so-called “conspiracy” theories ranging from the complete and constant monitoring of EVERYONE to getting ready for Jesus’ Second Coming.

I’m not into Jesus, but I am into privacy, so I gave them a listen.  After about 10 minutes, the show spiraled uncontrollably into the abyss of supposed police states, RFID conspiracies, and Big Brother-like plots.

That got me thinking — what would a person with the right type of access learn about me?  Looks like quite a bit.  If you flash your Homeland Security badge and cite some obscure deed falling under the Patriot Act, you’ll probably get access to the following:

• My bank records.  Because I bank at the same place, it will be a one-stop-shop of everything you need to know about my financial situation and purchasing habits.  After all, I like the convenience of debit, which means 95% of everything I buy leaves a trail.
• My shopping patterns — you could get this from several shopping club cards I carry for discount purposes.
• My internet search habits.  If you subpoena Google, you’ll have a very complete track of not just what I am doing, but what I am thinking about.  THINKING, for Christ’s sakes.  This is the exact idea behind Google’s recent flu maps.
• My viewing preferences.  Your cable company knows what you are watching — I’ve confirmed this.  One time, my DVR broke, so I called in and they were able to manipulate it from their central office, and they told me what I was watching (Comedy Central, of course).
• Most of my Internet habits.  To get this one, all they’d have to do is subpoena my cable provider, and voila — all places where my IP pointed, in neat little log files.
• My phone calls — between the exact time, date, and length of ALL my phone calls, some VoIP providers actually record the calls — after all, the cost per terabyte of hard drive space is dropping lower by the week.
• My travels — between the credit card records such as gasoline purchases and reservations at airline companies, you’d know exactly when I traveled and would be able to deduce why.  Don’t forget about toll tags in your car.
• Email conversations.  This one is easy and is directly tied to your email account provider — while Google and Yahoo! may push a little bit, Comcast and TimeWarner would quickly fall in line and divulge everything.
• Social networking sites.  Everyone’s got at least a Facebook/MySpace account — this one is self-explanatory if you just think about crap people post, sometimes with up-to-the-minute precision.
• Compliance records — driver’s license renewals, registration stickers, tax records, etc.

You can also get into some other stuff that tracks your behavior, like OnStar tracking, street cameras, Google Streetview.

The bottom line — we all leave more of a trail than a car with a busted oil pan.  I am not too bothered by it, fuck it, we live in a modern society.  But there are people that are … oh yes, they are.