Data Privacy Protection in the Age of Data Mining

From the article "US plans massive data sweep":

"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere," says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we haven't thought about. It's one of the underlying fundamental issues we have yet to come to grips with."

Data privacy is one of the areas where Germany law actually is quite advanced. It already talks explicitely about the dangers data integration may pose. You can learn about the German "Bundesdatenschutzgesetz" (Data Security Law) in this excellent article from Siemens.