Privacy for Sale: How Computerization Has Made Everyone's Private Life an Open Secret

Using his home computer, Rothfelder obtained Dan Quayle's credit report and found out where Dan Rather shops. In a chilling, important expose of snoop technology and the growing invasion of Americans' privacy, the author, former information management editor of Business Week , shows how the average person's birthdate, unlisted phone number, financial status, health records, employment history and other personal data can be accessed with relative ease by tapping credit bureaus, government files and an information underground of hidden data networks. A prospective employer, as Rothfeder shows, can find out what prescription drugs you take and whether you ever applied for worker's compensation. He reports that at dozens of major companies, pinhole camera lenses with microphones secretly track employees' actions and conversations. He also takes us inside the FBI's crime databank, which contains records on some 20 million Americans, including political activists and ``people of dubious character.'' Rothfelder advocates congressional and court action to keep Big Brother from watching. His report performs a valuable public service by dramatizing massive potential abuses. Author tour. (Aug.)