Thus a BusinessWeek reader quipped at the comments box for this little zinger. Let your imagination soar past phone calls:

The Departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security spend millions annually to buy commercial databases that track Americans’ finances, phone numbers, and biographical information, according to a report last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Often, the agencies and their contractors don’t ensure the data’s accuracy, the GAO found.

Buying commercially collected data allows the government to dodge certain privacy rules. The Privacy Act of 1974 restricts how federal agencies may use such information and requires disclosure of what the government is doing with it. But the law applies only when the government is doing the data collecting.

“Grabbing data wholesale from the private sector is the way agencies are getting around the requirements of the Privacy Act and the Fourth Amendment,” says Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington and a member of the Homeland Security Dept.’s Data Privacy & Integrity Advisory Committee.

The Justice Dept. alone, which includes the FBI, spent $19 million in fiscal 2005 to obtain commercially gathered names, addresses, phone numbers, and other data, according to the GAO. The Justice Dept. obeys the Privacy Act and “protects information that might personally identify an individual,” a spokesman says. Despite the GAO’s findings, a Homeland Security spokesman denies that his agency purchases consumer records from private companies. The State Dept. didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Here’s one of BW’s more awake readers opening eyes further:

Nickname: missingamerica
Review: BusinessWeek is starting to scare me. This story in combination another BW story titled Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules has me considering the possibility that Bush et al’s spying on Americans has a much more venal motive: Simple greed. What a way to gain business advantage..spy on everybody whenever, wherever. Throw in the still secret meetings that Cheney had with the oil industry prior to the amazing runup in prices… I guess if Halliburton somehow gets such an SEC reporting waiver, I shouldn’t be surprised.
Date reviewed: May 25, 2006 12:12 AM

No dear, you shouldn’t.