Every day technologies are being used to monitor Americans with unprecedented scrutiny -- from driving habits to workplace surveillance. Shoppers and diners are observed and analyzed; Internet searches are monitored and used as evidence in court.

It is big business that collects most of the data about us. But increasingly, it's the government that's using it.

In a Special Report airing Thursday at 9pm and midnight ET, "Big Brother Big Business," CNBC takes a look at the companies behind the powerful business of personal information and the people whose lives are affected by it, including: a woman who lost her job due to mistaken identity; a man whose cell phone records were stolen by his former employer; a woman whose personal information was stolen from a company she had never heard of; a man who discovered his rental car company was tracking his every move.

The documentary also looks at how the FBI, the Border Patrol, police departments and schools are using biometric technologies to establish identity as well as an inside peek at an AOL division that works solely to satisfy the requests of law enforcement for information about AOL's members.