I now tell pollsters the exact opposite of what I think, and if I have no opinion, I make one up.
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When I'm called by political phone rooms who want to know if they can count on me on Election Day, I always say yes regardless of who they are and what their candidate espouses.
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You may be wondering what this has to do with personal technology. Everything, as a matter of fact. In the age of vast databases, privacy is under assault, and every personal computer linked to the Internet supplies information about the person using it. Every time we make a purchase or fill out a form online, that information is stored, and we are willing accomplices in the loss of privacy.
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"We're victims of a war on privacy that's being waged by government eavesdroppers, business marketers and nosy neighbors," Simson Garfinkel writes in his book "Database Nation." "Unrestrained technology ends privacy. Video cameras observe personal movements; computers store personal facts; and communications networks make personal information widely available throughout the world."
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Government records contain a lot of information about people. Many of those records have always been theoretically open to the public, but the logistical and physical difficulties of knowing where to look for the records and finding them makes it hard to do. But online research has largely done away with those difficulties and made it easy for anyone to find out many things about you.
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