Quote Originally Posted by WyrreJ
The majority of the documents that have been issued and the laws that enabled the government to create these documents in the first place pre-date electronic storage and retrieval.

In other words, that's the not what we signed up for when we allowed the government to have such records in the first place. Easy searchability and cross-referencing on a national scale was not part of the bargain.

Circumstances have been changed by technology and no one has asked us, the citizenry, if the new powers that technology has enabled for the government are OK by us. The government just went off and assumed that the data is theirs and they can do whatever they want with it. That's not the original bargain we agreed to.

The data about me that government holds is MINE, not theirs, and their use of it is suppossed to be subject to my agreement. If you want proof of that, just read the 10th amendment - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Actually, we really did grant the government these permissions when we agreed to pay federal taxes. They need to identify us in order to collect taxes from us.