Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2008

Here's a 21st century twist on a conspiracy theorist's adage: Just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean you're not being followed electronically. News outlets have brimmed with tales of websites, cable TV companies, Internet service providers and even the government quietly monitoring what you do and say. It's all supposedly for your own good, in ways large (protecting you from terrorist sleeper cells) or minute (showing you advertisements that might be less irritating). The monitoring may also serve to fatten someone else's wallet. In any case, it's galling how little the monitored masses have to say in the matter.

Most of the surveillance is being done by machines, with no human poring over the data collected. Take, for example, the British firm Phorm, whose software observes virtually every site a person visits to compile a profile for advertisers. When the person arrives at a website using Phorm's services, his or her profile will determine which ads the site displays. Phorm says it retains no data on individuals, yet it doesn't ask Internet users' permission to watch their movements.

Meanwhile, advertiser-supported websites grab copious amounts of information about their visitors. Nor does the monitoring end at your computer. Cable operators and TiVo are taking data from their subscribers' set-top boxes to give advertisers and network executives an incredibly detailed picture of what their customers are watching — in TiVo's case, down to how many seconds of a commercial the viewer tolerates before skipping ahead. No individually identifiable data are collected, however, the companies insist.

One comforting thought about this kind of snooping is that there are ways to evade it. Browse the Web through an anonymous proxy. Trade in your TiVo for a VCR or a computer with digital video recording software. That's the critical difference between commercial services' monitoring efforts, which are well documented, and the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which remains sheathed in secrecy.

The government's scrutiny may prove to be vital to national security. Yet it would be easier to accept if the courts were peering over the Bush administration's shoulder, preventing the National Security Agency from indiscriminately gathering data on Internet use in the hope of finding a needle of suspicious activity within the haystack of mundane chatting and browsing. Otherwise, the notion that the NSA might be monitoring e-mails and page views isn't comforting; it's creepy.

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