On Tue, 2004-09-14 at 11:43 -0700, Dylan Reinhardt wrote: > Joshua Schmidlkofer wrote: > > > I am weary at the thought of explaining the way I think about this. > > Suffice it to say: Cliff's concerns are 100% correct. I think that he > > softens the concern too much. Safeway gives you a discount for letting > > them keep your info - so do Albertsons, and a couple other stores. In > > 1984 it was Big Brother, in 2004, it is greedy consumerism. > > As with many things, the truth here is a bit counter-intuitive. > > The "club card" method of data collection is the safest and most honest > way to do something that is usually done more silently and dangerously. > Safeway is *asking* you to opt in and *paying* you for your > participation. If you don't want to play along, you don't have to.
Yeah, I still find it creepy when they say "Thank you Mr. Wells". I wish they wouldn't do that. But it does serve as a reminder of how we sell our personal liberty to save a few bucks, so I suppose it's invaluable in that regard. I agree with you about how we are mercilessly tracked in modern society. I also acknowledge that most of the time the end result is actually beneficial (targeted marketing, reduced costs, lowered prices, for example, 911 using GPS with cell phones, etc). However, there is definitely a line to be drawn. This is a perfect example of what's commonly referred to as a "slippery slope". It's easy to dismiss all these invasions of privacy as "modern life". People in less free countries than ours accept quite a bit more as "day to day life", including strip-searches, imprisonment without trial and worse. Just because something permeates your environment doesn't make it acceptable. In fact, these are usually the most dangerous types of things since they are easy to overlook or dismiss as normal. To jump way out in left field (but it's a strong example), most children from abusive families don't recognize that they are being abused until well into adulthood, simply because it seems "normal" to them. > Contrast that with how the exact same thing is done virtually everywhere > else: indexing purchases by credit card number. This approach has > obvious security implications, but that's still how most retailers do > it. Any merchant gateway will echo back the customer name and CC# when > you swipe a card at POS. That's not felt to be a loss of privacy b/c > the same info is printed on the card itself... but being able to capture > it makes data analysis a whole lot easier. > > Safeway should be cheered for finding a less invasive and less risky way > to aggregate information: by use of an internal ID that has little or no > theft value. It's still the case that some scan data might be > considered sensitive... pharmacy purchases, for example. But at least > Safeway has the means (and, it would appear, *intention*) if collecting > and analyzing de-identified data. I would prefer that Safeway not associate my name with the purchases I make (I can see no additional benefit to having a name linked with the number), so I'd stop short of a standing ovation. I have no problem with them knowing that customer 103934934834 likes to buy panty hose, but when they tie my name and address with it there's a potential for abuse with little return. > By way of contrast, you can't say as much for Fred Meyer, part of the > second-largest retail chain in the country (Kroger). It's a fair bet > Fred's is doing at least as much data collection, but such collection > almost surely involves information that is more valuable and more > specific to you personally: your name and/or credit card number. Use cash. All sorts of benefits to that. > In keeping with a general open-is-better philosophy, I'm far more > comfortable with systems where the goals (and flaws) are obvious (club > cards, GMail, national census) than those systems where goals and flaws > are concealed and/or likely to change (credit bureaus, database > resellers, hotmail, HMOs). Sure, and I'd agree for the most part. Except for the part where you forget you are talking about today and acting like the future will never arrive with its mergers and buy-outs and privacy-shredding laws that will eventually tie all this info into your dossier for review by the FBI or whoever deems it "necessary" to "investigate" you. Probably without your knowledge. It's done all the time - today - in this country. This carefree collection of personal information simply creates huge wealths of data to be mined and people are becoming more and more comfortable with it. To consider how far as a society we've slipped down this dangerous slope, consider the uproar over the introduction of Social Security numbers. Now people don't even bat an eye at handing that number to any minimum-wage monkey who calls during dinner. > If I seem unconcerned about minor losses of privacy, it is because I > have witnessed vastly larger losses first-hand. We have far less > privacy to lose than many of us may realize. Agreed. Doesn't mean we need to accept it, or worse, volunteer for it, which, IMHO, is what signing up for services like Orkut and Gmail amount to. Regards, Cliff -- Cliff Wells <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ PDXLUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pdxlug.org/mailman/listinfo/pdxlug
