But I'm not spanish (RANT)

I always protected my privacy in the USA. I only had two credit cards because I hated to give out my information. I always had an unlisted telephone number. I always "lie" on telephone polls.

So why, during the 2004 election, did I keep getting telephone calls telling me I should vote for Kerry? And why were these phone calls in Spanish?

Did the Democratic national committee spy and find out that 1) I had an unlisted telphone number 2) I was registered under my maiden name as a Democrat 3) my husband's name was "hispanic"? and 4) decide to have a Spanish speaking telephone call to solicit our vote?

Talk about spying on personal records...

Similarly, for years we got various advertisements in Spanish. Who was trolling?
And why did I get ads for the ACLU and Planned Parenthood? Who sold my name? The Democratic party? The Holocaust Museum?

You think telephone records are "private"? well, as Blogfather comments:And yes, you can usually find out who's behind a phone number by simply typing it into Google, and you'll even get a map to their house, which seems like more of a privacy invasion to me.

And then there are medical records. You think they are private? Well, in our office, we didn't write a lot of personal stuff. Because some secretary would "code" the diagnosis. And we lived in a small town. Everyone already knew everyone else's business...

Then that diagnosis goes to the people paying the bill: your insurance company, or maybe the government. So they know if you have a cold or Chlamydia. As for HIV, yes we don't put that on the diagnosis. But I remember at a National Guard meeting on HIV in the 1980's. that the officer who processes government insurance noted an increase in young men dying of "viral pneumonia" and deduced that HIV was probably behind the deaths (PCI Pneumonia looks identical to viral pneumonia on X ray).

What is more common is if you come in for a stress problem, or depression....One of my patients admitted we gave her prozac (for severe PMS, a tiny dose) on her driver's license, and I had to write a letter to clear her to drive. You see, she wrote down she was taking a "psychoactive medication"...I told her next time to lie. But I've had insurance companies and Pharmacists warn me about double dipping of narcotics...most were druggies, but some only had breakthru pain.
But one can go overboard the other way. The "privacy act" means we aren't allowed to discuss diagnoses with familes...we do, of course, but we could be fined if we tell the wrong relative.

So, like most Americans, I am disturbed about the NSA doing widespread wiretapping of phone calls...but on the other hand, I also remember that a judge would not allow FBI agents to open Moussaoui's computer...if they had, 3000 people would still be alive...

So, if the NSA wants to screen our telephone calls to chicago because my name came up on a watch list, then what the heck...after all, there are Alquada operatives in Makati, and many Oklahomans think that is where Terry Nichols learned to make the OKC bomb...

My REAL worry is that they are casting the net so wide that they will miss the trees for the forest.

And, of course, when there are 700 000 gang members in the USA, one worries that our law enforcement priorities might be more worried about rare terrorism instead of much more common types of violence...