Robert Torricelli: “if Americans knew that every time they walked through their local shopping mall or wandered through the shopping…”

“if Americans knew that every time they walked through their local shopping mall or wandered through the shopping district of their hometown their movements were being tracked, every purchase was being recorded, and every conversation was being monitored, they would be outraged. Americans would consider this level of surveillance a violation of their most basic constitutional right. Yet that very expectation of privacy we expect in our traditional shopping in the local mall, or our visiting with friends, or searching for information in our hometown is exactly what is not happening in the shopping center of the 21st century in cyberspace. Whenever a citizen ventures online to pay a bill, seeks medical advice, purchases a product, checks the latest news, or engages in a conversation on the Internet, there is a chance that someone is gathering information about us, recording their information, and then selling it, or giving it to others. It is a very disturbing new look at a very exciting new technology.”