The Big Squeeze on Americans' Privacy

And I'm pretty ticked off about that.

My bean-spilling plans were already afoot. I'd lined up a couple of those Web services that for 20 or 30 or 50 bucks will "SNOOP, SPY and satisfy your curiosity about ANYONE, ANYTIME!" and "RUIN ANYONE with Top Secret Software!"

I was all set to plug in the names of the Assembly Banking Committee members who appear to have no problem at all putting you and me and our kids on the auction block. They killed a bill that would have shielded Californians' privacy, telling telemarketers and businesses that if they want to get their mitts on our private financial information, then we the people, one at a time, would have to OK it first, in writing. I figured that if some legislators are willing to sell my information without my knowing about it or approving it, then I'd get the goods on them and see how they liked it.

Then Court came along and beat me to it. He published the first four digits of several committee members' Social Security numbers as a "wanted" poster on the Web site of his group, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.

Were they mad? You haven't heard screaming like that in the Capitol since Gray Davis opened last summer's electricity bill.

Because he did it first, it's Court who might be hauled off to jail, not me. Capitolistas are so angry about his performance politics that the CHP has been ordered to investigate and the Assembly speaker has designated a group of brow-furrowers to look into this. It's called the Special Committee on Protocol, but it might as well be called the Special Committee for Don't They Know We're Special?

There are also rumblings that Court may have transgressed Article IV of the state Constitution. That makes it a felony to try to influence a legislator's vote through intimidation, but do you think there's an Article V about influencing a vote through donation? In your dreams.

I called Court to congratulate him, sort of, for getting the jump on me, and to tell him I might visit him in jail if it came to that. He laughed and said: "If I'd just sold [the legislators'] Social Security numbers instead of giving them away for free, it'd be OK. If I'd made money on it, that'd be OK by the principles they're supporting. My mistake wasn't publishing part of their Social Security numbers -- it was not charging for all of them."