On Sat, May 11, 2002 at 08:23:39PM -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
| On Tue, Apr 30, 2002 at 09:20:32PM -0400, Steve Furlong wrote:
| > And most of the sheeple _like_ it. They'd rather be safe than free. For
| > every complaint I've heard about having to reassure the bank that the
| > card wasn't stolen, I've heard a couple dozen praises for the wonderful
| > safe system that takes care of its members.
|
| I'm a bit late here, but let me rise to the defense of profiling of this
| sort. The reason we have interest rates on credit cards which are not
| far higher than they are now and have ready availability of credit in the
| first place (not to mention credit cards being accepted nearly everywhere)
| is anti-fraud measures like automated profiling. In other words, it's
| something that benefits the consumer by keeping costs down.
| This analysis, of course, ignores that some of the push toward record
| keeping on the part of businesses comes not just from market pressure,
| but political pressure. USA PATRIOT expands dramatically police access
| to credit card databases. And if Visa/MC/AMEX don't comply, perhaps
| the tax code might be adjusted in a certain harmful way, or perhaps
| they'll be accused of harboring terrorists, or perhaps the feds will
| stop using their cards for purchases...
You're also ignoring that the record keeping is dependant on
government issued identifiers, which make cross correlation of records
possible, and the failure of the government to protect those
identifiers. Thats exactly the same underlying enabling technology
that's led to identity theft.
Adam
--
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
-Hume
