Imagine that every time you went to the grocery store, convenience store, bookstore, or hardware store, those stores — under government orders — sent a complete, itemized list of what you bought and when you bought it to the government and organizations working on its behalf that could challenge you to explain any purchase that catches their interest. Or imagine that the manufacturer of your car, at the behest of the government, set up a direct feed from your car's GPS so the government could interrogate you about any of your travels.
Just that sort of Big Brother scenario is on its way to your local broker courtesy of my agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). The federal government is forcing every broker in the United States to turn over every investor's trades from start to finish to a database that the SEC and private regulators will be able to mine for data and analyze. Your broker cannot opt out, and neither can you, unless you stop trading in U.S. markets. People working for over a dozen different organizations in the public and private sector will have access to the data, and there are few concrete parameters on how they can use it.
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