Page "Surveillance" Paragraph 47

But today many of these records are electronic, resulting in an " electronic trail ".

Every use of a bank machine, payment by credit card, use of a phone card, call from home, checked out library book, rented video, or otherwise complete recorded transaction generates an electronic record.

Public records — such as birth, court, tax and other records — are increasily being digitized and made available online.

In addition, due to laws like CALEA, web traffic and online purchases are also available for profiling.

Electronic record-keeping makes data easily collectable, storable, and accessible — so that high-volume, efficient aggregation and analysis is possible at significantly lower costs.