Intelius, a company based out of northern Washington state, provides on their website a clearinghouse of personal information—including cell-phone numbers—for more than 90 million private citizens nationwide. For a small cost, this personal information, retrieved from government agencies and sundry third party companies, like credit card and utility corporations, is available to the public at large.
So that now, not only can the background information (age; relatives and associates; prior residences; past bankruptcies and liens, if any) of anyone from you to me to boxing champ Floyd Mayweather Jr., and fellow local Celine Dion be accessed, but we all can be tracked, too, via the numbers to our cell phones, for a one-time fee of less than $20.
This is not surprising. We can no longer claim that. With the increasing population and enhancing technology in today’s America, through which the distance between individual citizens shortens to the point of eradication, one’s privacy in this country has become more and more difficult to protect, to preserve. We all know this. The evidence is prevalent. Not only can a neighbor stand tiptoe and look over his fence into his neighbor’s living room, but he, for the past decade, can also log onto the Internet and dig up his neighbor’s background information from Intelius’ predecessors on the web: KnowX, US Search and even Google, to some extent. Intelius has merely taken it one step further: Now, through cell phones, their numbers published or not, a person can be tracked down against his wishes—at any time, too, as most of us go nowhere without our phones.
This is, however, shocking. Especially for those of us who wish to keep our private lives just that: private. We who prefer our past to remain the past. Who wish not that the tranquility of our personal time be invaded by any ol’ stooge with a credit card and $20 to it. Which is something I, for one, had chosen to believe was an inalienable right in this country—if only because the freedom upon which this country was founded is not authentic but merely lip service bereft of privacy: not just the right to chose privacy for oneself but the duty of everyone else to respect it.
And so, it was my assumption that unless I committed a crime or ran for public office, or conceded my private matters by my own volition, I could expect with some reasonableness for my privacy to be respected. Not that I anticipated a corporation—any corporation—to practice this responsibility, for in the end they are at liberty to do as they like, but I did anticipate the public—composed of individuals like myself, who together as a mass hold the power over all corporations to either starve or nourish them—would. For one man’s liberty must end where another’s begins.
But I was wrong. More than 1.5 million visitors to intelius.com per day go to show that the public at large not only has no qualms with, but even seeks, the information Intelius provides. (Which, the company states, is intended for background and verification checks—very useful for mothers researching potential nannies; employers, potential employees; lovers, potential mates. To be sure, Intelius, the company, is not to blame.) According to ComScore Media Metrics, the website is the seventh most visited on the Internet. It is not going anywhere.
And so I, for one, am hurt. Privacy lost is a harmful thing. Not that I, a simple man, am a prime target to have my biography commenced, as inchoate as it may be available, or to be tracked on my cell phone, its number available on Intelius. But that’s not the point. The problem is that it’s not only possible—it’s acceptable. As we all know, freedom is not merely being free of invasion, it’s just as much being free from the fear of invasion. For this reason I feel for the celebrity, the Celine Dions and Floyd Mayweather Jrs. Because they are in fact prime. Many of their names come up on the Intelius site; whether or not their personal cell phone numbers are available is unknown knowledge to me. I did not look. For I cannot, at any rate, lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
A spokeswoman from Intelius says that there are two ways by which you and I can opt out of the company’s database. One is to fax or mail the company a request to opt out, which in the end is just a temporary removal. The other is to be more diligent—and vigilant—when distributing personal information, like your cell phone number, to government agencies and third party corporations. Because, in today’s America, once that information hits the public domain—once it gets out—it is all but impossible to reel back in.