Using Your Privacy Against You

guttentag writes: "Christian Science Monitor Reporter Warren Richey suspects he may have stumbled onto a credit card fraud ring that uses Internet merchants to quietly funnel night-vision rifle scopes to Middle Eastern terrorists and privacy policies to cover their tracks. Even if these are isolated incidents, it's worth noting that the privacy rules intended to protect us can also work against us."

Comments

You don't say...

[ebbomega]

Can we please moderate the whole story?

If I had the points I'd be giving it Flamebait with all five points....

Jesus Christ. Yes, it's true that privacy helps criminals do crimes, but it's not like I'm going to install a camera in my bedroom so that the police know in case a crime happens to occur within the bounds of my room.

I know of a similar group that had the general mantra that Security compromises Freedom, and quite frankly The Party in 1984 scared me more than two liner jets flying into the World Trade Center ever did.

Point of the matter is the only way to ensure stuff doesn't get smuggled to the Enemies of State is to keep your eyes on the entire populous 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, then we forfeit our general human decency of free will.

Honestly, every person who is capable thereof has a right to commit a crime. They also have a right to face the consequences of that crime. And that is what a lot of these security-mongers don't seem to understand.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we SHOULD go out and kill people and break every law in the book. What I'm saying is that with our free will we should be perfectly well allowed to do it to our capabilities and face the consequences. Me, personally, I don't think I'd want to go to jail, so as a result I won't do any crimes that would get me there. But there are crimes I break. I smoke Marijuana, I drive above the speed limit and I serve alcohol to minors (not all at the same time, mind you...). But I'm well aware of the consequences and I feel it is my right to break those laws, just as it is the government's right to punish me for doing so.

Re:You don't say...

[colmore]

The drinking age in America was 18 in most places until the Reagan highway bill. He tied highway funding to the drinking age to incourage states to up it to 21. Conceivably a State could get rid of the drinking age alltogether, but the federal government would make up all sorts of unrelated things to penalize them on.

Further proof that the modern American government in *no way* resembles the government described in the constitution.

Partial solution CC fraud: volutary limits

[Drashcan]

Why don't the credit card companies introduce the possibility for the card holders to opt out of certain categories of goods so that the credit card cannot be used to buy these kind of goods?

I am thinking in the first place about firearms. These are usually sold in specialised stores which can be easily identified in the credit card transaction databases. Most people do not buy firearms very often and certainly not with a credit card.

This could also apply to other goods.

Kids, please

[AftanGustur]

Sounds like you didn't RTFA. The problem is that the privacy practices prevented any real investigation of the fraud.

Instead of shouting back and forth 'it does', 'no it does not', could you please be so kind as to tell the rest of us who *DID* read the article, where it says anything in that direction.
I'm sorry but the string 'priv' doesn't even appear 1 time in the article.