The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has established a color-coded Privacy Threat Index to track the growing threat to privacy resulting from increased government surveillance.

Modeled after the Government's Homeland Security Threat Index, EPIC assesses the current level as Elevated (Yellow) --even though the Homeland Security index has reduced it's terror alert.

Chisum Lee reports in the Village Voice on what it will mean for us when the privacy alert index reaches "red."

If the nation were actually to reach red alert status, odds are the "Privacy Threat Index" color chart at epic.org would be wiped from the virtual world. Red means the government controls everything, the lives of Americans online and off.

...."Red is somewhere between Gattaca"—the science fiction movie in which the state uses genetics to dictate people's lives—"and George Orwell's 1984," said EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg. "Red means Big Brother's in charge."

....The critical point has to be the re-establishment of political freedoms as crisis subsides," he said. Yet the administration has indicated that "the war on terror is a war without end," he said, which threatens an equally ominous endlessness to government practices that impinge on people's privacy. Beneath the gimmick of colors, those practices raise serious questions about when government intrusiveness begins to exceed justifiable national security purposes and inappropriately invade private lives.

We recommend you put the privacy threat index on your sites. Epic provides an easy one line code to insert. As to Chisum Lee, read the whole column--information about the Government's plan to increase use of "biometric identifiers" is just one reason.