GAO Report Highlights Compelling Reasons for New Federal Privacy Law

Consumers keep sharing and disclosing lots of personal data—each time they shop, surf the Web, subscribe to magazines, or contribute to charities. Mounds of this data are being compiled and combined, creating so-called digital dossiers that outline much about who we are—or, at least, some approximation of who companies think we are, based on our consumer preferences. As our data gets resold, recombined, and repurposed, we often have little idea who has data about us, where a given company may have initially obtained that data, and what that data will be used for in the future. It feels as if we have no real control over our own data. This is the brave new world of big data.