I'm for privacy as much as the next freak, but what it comes down to is this: if the US government wants to find out stuff about you, they will. They know where you live, they know where you work, they likely know if you like your toilet paper loaded over or under.

There are far more important infringements on your freedom that you should be worried about instead of whether you give your SS# to some clerk to get your fishing license. For starters, check out the link in my signature. Dmitry is being accused by the FBI of "aiding in the trafficking of pirated software", and all he did was present a security analysis of Adobe's ebook format at a security conference. He's been locked up for over two weeks now without anyone being able to contact him; not his wife and children, not the Russian embassy, NO ONE.

He is but a sign of the future, my friends. If an American was arrested in, say, China for giving educational presentations it would be all over the news and the US government would be flexing all over the damned place (gee, does this sound familiar?). Instead, we are the captors. And the vast majority of Americans don't know anything about it.