American businesses feel a little like a rope that's being used in a tug of war between privacy and patriotism.

Their customers want the personal information that businesses collect to be kept private, but the government wants access to some of that data for use in various homeland security plans.

So what's a company to do? That's the question being asked this week at the Privacy & American Business' ninth annual national conference in Washington.

Organizers said that the focus of this year's conference, "managing the privacy revolution," reflects businesses' deep concern over how to enhance homeland security while not surrendering customer privacy. Besides business people, plenty of government officials, privacy advocates and corporate privacy workers are on hand.

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