Occasionally I have to take a moment to just vent my opinions about the state of privacy laws, practices, and identity theft. The high-tech approach being taken by law enforcement agencies that is geared toward finding terrorists seems to be bringing in far more information about the average person, though. Whether there are laws on the books that have to be wiggled around, or there are simply no laws covering the specific technology yet, law enforcement agencies are moving forward with implementing technologies that are increasingly invasive with regards to our private lives.

The 2012 Consumer Sentinel Network Identity Theft report shows a surprisingly quick growth in financial frauds committed against the government. A good deal of these are probably related to fraudulent tax returns being filed by identity thieves, which has been a growing concern for the past several years, but the category includes things like driver's license fraud as well.

And unfortunately, I'm not aware of any identity theft protection program that would cover a government agency. This presents a whole new problem to contend with.

CNet News rolled over my feed the other day with a story about how the IRS doesn't need warrants to grab your email, I had to check twice to make sure I wasn't reading The Onion again.

The story is apparently true. It's not clear whether bills that are already in consideration will change that, either.

So not only is it a good idea to keep financial communications out of your email for identity theft reasons, but also if you expect to have any privacy with the government.

EPIC often brings things to my attention that I may have missed. The FBI's Next Generation Identification system fits nicely in that category.

NGI is exactly what the name implies, an exponential growth from the IAFIS (Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System) covering way more than just fingerprints. NGI looks to aggregate photos, digital information, criminal histories, warrants, various biometric identifiers, even DNA information all in one database. It's easy to make the argument that CISPA isn't even relevant legislation, because NGI is already being built and its program expanded.