Who needs all this information about us?

One reason I don't like the idea of a government-run national health insurance is that I don't want Uncle Sam having copies of my medical records. The FBI doesn't need easy access to them, and I don't need my national health insurance carrier sending me letters every month telling me I'm overdue for a medical exam that I really don't feel that I need.

Then there are the political considerations of having too much personal information in the government's hands:

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Ohio’s government watchdog says an agency director improperly used state computers to find personal information on “Joe the Plumber.”

Ohio Inspector General Tom Charles said in a report released Thursday that the head of Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services looked up Joe the Plumber’s records without any legitimate business purpose.

Agency director Helen Jones-Kelley was placed on leave earlier this month over allegations a state computer or state e-mail account was used to assist in political fundraising.

The inspector general’s report looked into 18 background checks into Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, a Toledo-area man known as Joe the Plumber who became a centerpiece in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

The report finds that eight of those checks were done without any legitimate business purpose.

When The Herald-Dispatch was owned by Gannett, every now and then we'd get a newsroom manager parachute in and say what rural Cabell County needs is zoning. They could never understand that a lot of people live outside the city because they don't want a political hack telling them what they can do with their houses, driveways or back yards.

And a lot of us don't want the government having too much access to personal information about us.

That war may be lost, but we need to keep the battle going as long as we can.