The Cato Institute claims to be a leading defender of individual liberty, and in that role, it has endlessly sounded the alarm about government surveillance and other state encroachments on people's privacy. Weirdly, though, Cato rarely mentions even bigger threats to privacy from corporations.

That's quite a blind spot. After all, who spends more time and energy scouring the details of your life: The U.S. government or Google? Who is more likely to track everything you buy, everyplace you go, what you eat, and how you vote -- the geeks at the NSA or consumer data firms like Acxiom, which is said to have information on 500 million consumers worldwide, including nearly every adult in the U.S., with up to 1,500 data points per person? Who is more likely to materially affect your life chances -- say, for getting a mortgage or a job—federal intelligence agencies or private credit rating agencies, including those that sell information about your borrowing history or criminal record that may be incorrect? Finally, what's scarier to you—the idea that your medical records and genetic information could end up in the hands of health and life insurance companies or end up in some computer at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services?