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Big Brother's Pizza Delivery
Dusty Rhodes writes: "Lexis/Nexis, providers of massive database information services mostly to media, legal and law enforcement organizations, is hyping their new database service, BatchTrace, to track fugitives and deadbeats.
In addition to cataloging common info such as census records, driver's license records, etc., this database includes pizza delivery records, tech support call records and grocery store discount card records.
Who knew you'd need an alias to order a pizza? Pretty funny/sad stuff in the Land of the Free. What's next, a national pizza delivery ID, complete with thumbprint and DNA sample?
Thanks to Britt Sandusky for pointing us to this story."
. . . sorry, Mr. Smith, no pizza for you this evening; the credit card charge has been diverted to the State for your back child support payments.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
When "Big Brother" and "Pizza Delivery" come together, normally some sort of obligatory reference to Snow Crash is required.
But in this case, there's actually something interesting to be questioned. The subject article comes from the credit history angle, for purposes like trying to locate deadbeats. But take the more sinister view and add "financial profiling." How about checking takeout orders, but instead of looking for pizza look for Halaal food? Of course only sleeper-cells would order take-out Halaal. (for Halaal, think Kosher, only for Muslims)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The dangerous escaped convict, Codexus, was arrested after he made the mistake of ordering his usual Sushi, Banana, Oignon, Extra-Cheese pizza. He was the only person in the BatchTrace database to have ever ordered that kind of pizza and the system was able to immediately alert the police.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
People give me an odd look when I tell them that I live a mostly cash-only lifestyle. Each paycheck I withdraw all but the small amount which goes on a credit card. No before you call me a hypocrite, I use the CC for transactions that are already recorded, no matter how I pay (savings bonds purchases, paying bills, etc.).
However, I always use cash for gassing up the car, for normal retail purchases (food, hardware supplies, elecetronics/software, etc.). For mail order and some bills I use USPS money orders. At least with money orders, my bank doesn't know I paid $55 for last month's water bill even if the water company does. That's just one less piece of information some company can exploit.
It's getting bad out there. I was alarmed when I bought a DVD player at Wal Mart and they entered the serial # into the register!
It's revelations like this story that make me glad I tolerate the odd looks for my perceived "odd" behavior. Some day, one of you discount card users is gonna get a notice from your health insurance about a premium increase because they know that you buy a gallon of Rocky Road icecream every week. Trust me -- it will happen some day!
Method of processing duck feet
Unfortunately, the BoR only applies to the federal government. Since this is a public company collecting the information, there is no guarantee against it due to the BoR. Hopefully, it can be made illegal on the grounds of invasion of privacy, but it would have to be challenged.
IANAL
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
"... and grocery store discount card records."
I stopped going to Safeway, since they use discount cards rather than just giving customers the price at which they want to sell without expecting to track them.
(Discount cards do NOT provide discounts. The grocery store always sells at the price they want to sell. They merely increase the price so that people will get cards, and can then be tracked, especially if they ever use a credit or debit card in connection with a purchase.)
I've started shopping at WinCo Foods instead. They have much lower prices, and they don't do sneaky things. WinCo Foods stores are located in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Nevada.
Did Safeway think that there would be no cost for them in tracking the customer?
I've noticed that abusive companies eventually disappear, or almost disappear. At one time IBM had 90% of the PC market, but they tried to trap customers with a proprietary bus system. At one time Novell had 85% of the PC network market, but they didn't care that their software had a lot of quirks. At one time PC Magazine was a large bi-weekly magazine, but they seemed to favor some companies in their test results. If you believe these examples are representative, then you may begin to think that eventually Microsoft will be a small software company.
You have nothing to hide? The Agency is terribly sorry Mrs. Buttle...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
ASDA, which is owned by Walmart, is one of the UK chains that have abandoned loyalty card schemes, saying customers prefer low prices to gimmicks.
I don't think the sort of data collection and matching mentioned in the head article would be legal in the EU. The US needs Data Protection laws!
P.S.:
Anyone who doesn't know that Microsoft is abusive should read this article that I wrote about Windows XP problems: Windows XP shows the Direction Microsoft is Going. Click Reload if you have visited the article before, because it has recently been re-written with added material.
Great! Any information as to what steered them in that direction?
Oh, and the US does have a "data protection" law. It is called the DMCA. There is also another one coming out called the CBDTPA. In my country no one cares about the citizen's rights. :-(
BTW (in case someone doesn't get it) I know what was meant by data protection laws--I was being sarcastic...
It is possible to design a system that will allow secure and anonymous electronic cash transactions. It is certainly easier to not make the transactions anonymous, but it can be done. Generally the people who are paying for systems to be implemented do not have privacy within the system as a goal. They want this information. They also don't want it to get out. Of course a search warrant solves that little moral quandry...
Lasers Controlled Games!
Brazil has had its own strangeness. I was living there when they switched from the Cruzeiro Real to the Real. They didn't correctly anticipate the number of coins that would have to be minted. For six months you couldn't get the 5 cents change from your 45 cent bus fare. You got a "5 cent coupon" instead. So basically the bus fare was 50 cents with your tenth ride free!
ps For being a privacy nut you just told us all where you live. Smith's and Albertson's aren't exactly nationwide chains. :)
Lasers Controlled Games!
Isn't census data supposed to be confidential?
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -B
It's OK, stick to your cash, but you can help us befuddle the databases by starting your own card swapping club.
Go ahead and register for your discount card, but never use it. Trade with someone else. Trade again. Get a bunch of friends together, throw all of your cards in a pile, stir them up and then pull out the same type and number of cards that you threw in. When you meet someone else that has cards like yours, swap again.
Obviously this doesn't work for credit cards or anything that has your name on it.
Keep paying with cash.
So far I have swapped Safeway, Albertson's, Tom Thumb, and Brookshires with people from all over the country, as far apart as Alaska, California, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. The last swap was in Alaska and I have no idea who's card I gave, nor who's I have.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Great! Any information as to what steered them in that direction?
A quick furtle about the BBC site finds this article about Safeway UK following ASDA's lead and quotes ASDA as saying only a tiny percentage of their surveyed customers wanted one. Personally, I do have a another chain's loyalty card but only because they offered Air Miles on it.
Certainly supermarkets here don't do the dual pricing with-card discounted vs without-card more expensive thing I've seen in the US. Maybe our consumer protection laws would deem that misleading. Instead the usual way to get a discount is that when you've accrued a certain number of points you get a voucher with a nominal monetary value that you can offset against your next purchase.
Every point in the article has been verified by Microsoft employees or has been backed up with links to news sites.
I forgot to say earlier that if you have found an error in the article about Microsoft, referenced above, I will fix it.
Hopefully, it can be made illegal on the groudns of invasion of privacy, but it would have to be challenged.
What are you talking about? Invasion of privacy refers to publication of embarrassing private facts of no legitimate newsworthiness. This is a service to let you find someone's address, which doesn't even remotely fit the bill.
I think the government should have to get a warrant to grab my credit card purchases and my grocery buying habits and who I've called and where I've surfed. To me, that's private stuff.
I think you just have to live with the fact that people you do business with can keep a record of that business. Of course, your credit card company and grocer have the right to refuse to provide information to the government, but they have no obligation to refuse.
(that really, only you should know. There's no real excuse for anyone knowing that you got gas at exactly 11:42 pm).
So if someone sells you gas, they have no excuse for knowing when they did so?!
In short, my belief is that the Bill of Rights was a statement against the government being able to harvest any data about you that is not widely publicly known (dob, place of residence, etc) unless they have probable cause (aka a search warrant).
That's absurd. Virtually any sort of police investigation involves harvesting information that isn't publicly known without a warrant. The police don't need a warrant to ask a pizza delivery guy if he saw a certain person when he delivered pizza to a certain apartment yesterday, so why should they need a warrant to get information from Lexis/Nexis that Lexis/Nexis obtained from pizza delivery companies?
The government violates the Bill of Rights in a variety of ways, but this is not one of them.
I can see definitely that some parts of the article need to be re-written. However, nothing you have said convinces me that there is a technical error.
Is it possible that you were not reading the latest version? Did you reload your browser?
The registry has the problems that I mentioned. We are not talking about problems you had. We are talking about problems that I have had and that are commonly known. It is very easy to back up the registry. It is impossible under some conditions to make use of a backup. Those conditions are explained in the article.
You said, "I've never run into that ALT+TAB bug either." A reader sent me an explanation of how it works. The problem only occurs after you have more than 21 programs running at the same time. After that, it starts acting oddly, to say the least.
I can't answer more fully now, but I will have a careful look at everything you said.
The article references a Microsoft article that discusses backup limitations. They say that disk cloning is "not supported" under some conditions. I agree with that. The problems have nothing to do with the SID.
> When I saw the headline I thought that they finaly decided to implement my idea of useing the police to deliver pizzas.
Wonder how many apartment maintenance men are undercover cops.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No, the point of insurance is to make money for the insurance companies.
Well, it's obviously true that that's the purpose of it for insurance companies. I was referring to the purpose of it for policy holders.
They define what insurance is, and regularly change those definitions, if you pay attention to the mailings sent to you.
Insurance companies are taking fewer risks themselves. Pretty soon, if that point hasn't been reached already, owning an insurance policy will be worth less than a savings account set aside containing the money that would have gone to an insurance company.In other words, insurance companies operating in a zero risk environment.
Of course, it has always been the case that, on average, you're better off saving the money, because otherwise insurance companies would go bankrupt. The point is that I'd rather lose a little money if my house doesn't burn down than lose a lot of money if it does. Whether a policy is worth more or less than a savings account is a subjective judgment based on one's individual risk-aversion.
At which point insurance companies will have ceased being a beneficial aspect of society.
If, indeed, people decide that their policies are worth less than savings accounts, insurance companies will cease being beneficial to society. However, they will also go out of business, because they will have no customers. Thus, they presumably will make sure that their policies remain useful.
Programs like this pizza thing, and deals with the supermarket saver cards, just bring us closer this end.
No, they don't. In our example, although purchase tracking makes health insurance more expensive to the guy who eats pizza all the time, it makes it cheaper for the rest of us. I see no problem with making people pay for the consequences of their actions. A far more interesting issue, where your points about insurance being worth less would actually apply, is what would happen if we were able to genetically screen for cancer or something, but that's not related to purchase tracking.
I have a few dozen cards for Giant Eagle courtesy of their online form. Conveniently, it even gives you a bar-coded "card" to print and use.
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