On Monday 10 October 2005 12:25, John Steck wrote:
> That said, my privacy is guaranteed from everyone but the most interested
> in violating it. Any of those motivated few don't need an electronic tag
> to get or do what they want.
>
> -john
>
>
If you don't think that businesses motivate their employees to spy on
their customers, then why not take a drive to your nearest Kroger.
They issue a card called a 'Kroger Plus' card to those foolish enough
to apply for one that is the very soul of privacy invasion. This application
becomes established your identity to their system. It contains just about
enough personal information to make your identity easily stolen. In Kroger's
case, they must be doing something with it. Every time one presents this
card at a Kroger cash line, every item purchased is recorded in their database
with something in your personal info as the 'key field' along with the date,
time, and store location. Over time a detailed profile of your life, habits,
and health, mental and physical, and occupation and vices, real and probable,
can be drawn. And draw it they do. They have reportedly gone to court
with evidence of customer beer purchases gleaned from Kroger Plus Card
histories in order to allege alcoholism and not Kroger's slippery floors were
the cause of customer slip and fall injuries.....and won!
This data must be quite valuable, as Kroger is willing to forego up to forty
percent or more of the 'retail' purchase price of thousands of items just to
get its claws on this data. Typical item, coffee, is just over five dollars
for what used to be a 3 pound can size if one consents to privacy violation,
and almost ten dollars for the same can if one values his privacy.
It is known from news items published right after 11Sep01 that Kroger
has been providing this info to government security agencies. They claim
that they will not 'give it out', but have never said that they do not
actually sell it, make it 'available' to its 'business partners' ad nauseum
or some other weasel words to the effect that they are doing just
that....selling it. Their employees become quite nasty when questioned about
this, and seem quite willing to lie for Kroger. I suspect that cameras and
microphones in the store record all employee statements and actions such that
they live under a self censorship regime similar to that of totalitarian
nations.
It makes me wonder just why they would pay so much for knowledge
of our individual shopping habits. Especially when in the past and near to
the present we have been told in the media that average store profit was
one percent or less. That said why would Kroger operate willingly at a forty
percent loss? Unless the not spy card users were overcharged; but prices
in Kroger, while higher than Wal-Mart, are not THAT much higher. So
why would they knowingly seemingly operate at such a crushing loss; and
do it year after year? Course if one buys beer regularly, this could be
profiled as alcoholism. Sweet stuff often, maybe the purchaser is a diabetic
Certain kinds of groceries as a general pattern would yield ethnic origin.
Buy a lot of hummus and lamb and olive oil and you are a middle easterner
and may gain status on the government's 'no fly list'. Even infants and dead
people get on it; why not you if you have a penchant for these
things ....and your name is 'Hassan'. But if your name is American and you
buy these things then maybe you are a sleeper agent? Suppose also you
buy quite a bit of kitchen chemicals, drain cleaners, and other stuff; then
your records become valuable to other government agencies like drug
enforcement. Many of the above would pay quite a bit to become a 'business
partner' of Kroger....speaking hypothetically of course. Hey! They have GOT
to be making money enough to keep the doors open every day when less than
25 shoppers are in the store at any one time. They have GOT to be making
money somewhere when the deli counters are full of meat that goes rotten
in the cases because no one comes to buy. They have GOT to be making
enough money to keep the lights on and maintain 13 cash register counters
and computer controlled inventory management systems and check verification
systems in or on each one, especially when only one register terminal is ever
manned outside of the so called check yourself out registers. They must be
making money to run a social experiment in coercion to force customers to
use automated check out systems merely by adopting a practice of having
only one manual check out aisle staffed. This has driven away many customers
yet Kroger persists in this onerous practice in the face of this. Most
customers do not like to wait in lines from the front of the store clear back
to the meat counter when the store could simply staff another register.
Customers inconvenienced in this way often just drive down the street to
a place that does not treat its customers as saleable databases and
unwilling guinea pigs in business practices experiments reminiscent of
Adam Smith. They leave.
Anonymous
