Slashdot Mirror
Safeway Club Card Leads to Bogus Arson Arrest
Richard M. Smith writes "Tukwila, Washington firefighter, Philip Scott Lyons found out the hard way
that supermarket loyalty cards come with a huge price. Lyons was arrested
last August and charged with attempted arson. Police alleged at the time
that Lyons tried to set fire to his own house while his wife and children
were inside. According to KOMO-TV and the Seattle Times, a major piece of evidence used against Lyons in his arrest was the record of his supermarket purchases that he made with his Safeway Club Card. Police
investigators had discovered that his Club Card was used to buy fire starters of the same type used in the arson attempt. For Lyons, the story did have a happy ending. All charges were dropped against him in January 2005 because another person stepped forward saying he or she
set the fire and not Lyons."
I'm thinking it was the wife who came forward and took responsibility for this crime. She probably had access to the Safeway Club Card, and most likely would not want to see her husband wrongfully convicted. I find it kind of sketchy that the prosecutor would not say who it is!
No decision has been made whether that person will be charged
Are you kidding me? The wrongfully-accused was charged almost immediately, and now this guy fronted up and they're thinking about it?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
How did police get the record of his Safeway purchases??? Can I go to my local safeway and see my personal record of purchases? What is Safeways Privacy policy... OH NEVERMIND... forgot we live in post 9/11 america.
Your Rights Online... The big thing here is a Supermarket loyalty card was used against the customer.
His house was set on fire.
He was charged with and arrested for arson.
What part of this story is "happy"?
The only thing that stood between him and serious prison time (not to mention probably losing all of his friends, family and destroying his career and reputation) was that the criminal who was responsible came forward. Do you know how rare that is? His "fortune" here was like falling off a 110 story building and having a huge gust of wind on a still day scoop you to safety at the very last second.
Let's not even entertain the possibility that someone could have died in the fire. If that were the case, I bet nobody would have stepped forward and this guy would have taken the fall - all so Safeway could target their demographics better. More, he probably would have been sentenced to life in prison at the least and everyone would be cheering for his execution. Because, of course, he's guilty if he has been convited, so he should fry!
This was a stomach-churning close-call.
I can't help thinking Michael posted this so that we could get up in arms, but that's how the system (and life in general) works. It's not always flawless and perfect, and legal investigations can sometimes lead to other areas that turn out to be incorrect. It's likely the authorities would have figured it out eventually. Not that I don't feel for the guy, getting wrongly arrested. But if it happened to me, and it was because of the kind of "evidence" described here, I wouldn't feel wronged in any way. I would understand that it was a valid mistake.
Which explain why there was at yet no charge retained against the new suspect. Nevertheless to those usually saying "if you have nothing to hide you do not need privacy" well this is one example of WHY we want privacy. Instead of searching for hard proof, the police seems to have only concentrated on circumstancial evidence (supermarket sale, and dog go right to the door).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
A card used to rack up shopping points was used against the owner of the card.
you get some measly shopping vouchers or gifts not worth their value
and the shop gets to target its market better
while they log exactly what you buy
which leads to this guy in this case, being screwed by this opt-in gathered infomation.
Makes pulling out those loyalty cards out of your wallet so encouraging huh?
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
Depending on the circumstances the prosecutor might be loath to prosecute the child.
His kid would have access to his Safeway card. (Another kid might have access to his phone number, which will work just as well.)
The confessor is not being identified. (Also suggesting a child.)
...for convincing me to browse at +3 with your "insightful" post.
He's lucky they didn't charge him under the Patriot Act for terrorism... Because then even if the real culprit came forward, they would both have been imprisoned without a trial for suspected terrorism!
Hey if it can happen for pointing a laser in the sky it can happen to anyone!
I think the person responsible for it has more to worry aboutif they said "he or she set the fire" - such as checking inside their pants.
A magistrate who found a £3,250 Rolex watch in a supermarket and gave it to his wife as a 60th birthday present was fined £600 after being found guilty of theft.
Rowlett, a building surveyor, was caught almost two years later after taking the watch for repair at a jewellers near his home in Poole.
It was identified from its serial number as having been lost or stolen.
Inquiries with Tesco, through its Club Card loyalty scheme records, and receipts of purchases showed Rowlett had been in the shop within two hours of Mrs ScottI agree, there's not much happy about it.
This was a stomach-churning close-call.
I guess I have more faith in the system.
They'd have to convince a jury that this "noble, hard working volunteer firefighter who loves his adoring family very much and just, out of the kindness of his own heart, adopted a child into his home and family", started a fire to kill them all.
And apparently they planned on doing it with nothing but circumstantial evidence which would vanish once a trial started. Any defense lawyer worth a damn is going to have a Safeway employee on the stand explaining several different ways someone could use his Safeway Club Card #.
bahaha! like anyone has loyalty to a supermarket.
You can just give them a phone number to get the discount, so use your friends/bosses/relatives. (At least here, in N.Cali, you can. I do it all the time.) For extra fun, use your bosses number while buying fifty bucks worth of saran wrap and baby oil at three in the morning. I know there was a guy who had a project going to get a bunch of people to use his card. I believe it was linked on /., actually.
Given that you can do all of the above (without whoever owns the card knowing about it), whoever was involved in the investigation ought to get a swift kick in the ass and a lifetime ban from any position of authority.
The emphasis is mine.
Fly-buys is a large loyalty scheme in Australia. AUSTRAC are the spooks responsible for tracing money as it flows through the economy.
Basically, the government is well aware of the abilty of loyalty schemes to trace otherwise untraceable cash transactions, and they would rather the public didn't know about it (as proven by the bungled attempt at censorship).
.... with all the money he saved he could afford a really good lawyer. I know 1 year of club card discounts could get me a decent lawyer for a couple of minutes.
Which is why I used a fake name and address when I signed up for my loyalty cards.
I've never seen any supermarket employee ask for ID when you fill out a loyalty card application. If anything, the employees are completely indifferent about letting customers borrow each others' cards, and will even provide spare cards of their own for customer who forget theirs.
Just use a fake name and address that are not obviously bogus, get the price discount, and stop worrying.
For example if you pay with a credit card, exactly the same information is stored and can be retrieved, with a warrant. Nothing to do with safeways cards.
Your Rights Online... The big thing here is a Supermarket loyalty card was used against the customer.
I don't find that aspect of it particularly troubling. They might as well have used a receipt for the purchase. If you pay with a credit card, the store will generally keep a copy of the recipt with your signature on it.
If you had a case where the cops (or anyone else) trawled through the store's database looking to round up people who had bought a particular item, that would be a problem.
But this is completely different. Given that it was arson, he was the obvious suspect. It is totally reasonable for the cops to ask for a warrant to examine his purchases. This could certainly include going through his household trash (for wrappers and receipts), credit card history, or store purchase history.
That said.. although he was a reasonable suspect, they should not have brought charges against him, since the actual evidence they dug up was fairly circumstantial.
The problem here is not infringement of privacy... it is that the DA was eager to go to trial without sufficiently incriminating evidence. It's a very good thing that the confession came when it did. He may have been found innocent anyway, but you never know.
I pay for everything with my VISA, i'm sure they would be able to take the ID number from the loyalty card and match it with my credit card. (All my loyalty cards have a unique ID and are scanned in at the time of the purchase).
I always like to use the cards because to get all the good deals in the supermarket you need one. I just fill it out with a fake name.
Though I suppose if somebody was looking for me they could just cross reference the card use with the security footage. Damn! Guess I need a new plan of action.
Seems to me like this really isn't an issue about the abuse of the Club Card. It's an issue about the police being able to arrest and charge somebody on very dodgy evidence. In another case, the use of purchase information could have been used to convict a guilty person who would otherwise have gotten away. If the rules regarding how easy it was for somebody to be charged on something like a purchase record alone were a little more sane, then I'm not sure there'd be any real problem.
A couple of months ago i visited the US for a few weeks. At a Safeway store i asked for a club card and got one without filling in any form. She didn't even ask, perhaps because she knew i was a foreigner. In my home country all my discount cards are anonymous. I just refuse to give my personal data. Works all the time.
If all you want is the occasional discount at the register, use made up info. No chain has yet refused to enroll Mr A T Hun,Brad Majors,Bat Guano, or Jesus H Christ.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
These absolutely conlusive datas, like digital data (used in this case) or genetic data (very similar because it is unique) bear a great danger. Since this data seems to be so unmistakable people think that the hint itself (pointing to a guilty or innocent person) is to be taken for granted too.
I could get a few hairs from someone, murder his wife, spread his hairs all over the place and the police would most probably think it was him (he was in his bed sleeping at home with nobody to witness)
BUT ITS just a CLUE. If i had worn a neoprene suit no genetic data would have dropped by me. The police would think that person is guilty. A good police investigator would know its only a hint and not enough to convict someone. Unfortunately the public is thinking that this data is confirmed.
Spelling errors were made for your amusement only...
... about privacy issues
Oh, wait! There IS
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
That's what my friends (greetings to fellow Cowherd members) and I do. Supermarkets are not authorized to verify the authenticity of the personal information you fill in when applying for their loyalty cards, so they have no right to demand that you reveal your true identity to them even if they suspect it's bogus.
For my Shop Rite card here in NJ they ask to see a drivers license or some form of ID. Same with a couple of the other ones I signed up for.
If all without responsibility & smarts were booted.
Heh, hit the nail on the head with that one ;) It seems a lot of people here don't realise this - you only need to charge a credit card against it once and the link is made.
It won't help you unless you always pay in cash since the computer system is set up to tie together debit or credit card info with the store card so they will know perfectly well that John Smith alwyas uses a loyalty card in the name of Donald Duck.
If you should ever find yourself on a jury. Chances are, had this gone to trial, he would've been convicted, and be in jail right now.
All the evidence is circumstantial and really pretty flimsy. The dog circling to the front door? Well of course he's going to detect that the family was in their own yard. While from movies we get these impressions of "superdogs" that do police work, in reality, such dogs are quite prone to make mistakes.
So his club card (not, apparently, his credit card-examine what's NOT said. The credit card would've been far stronger evidence. Had he used that, they would've worried about getting evidence from that and not even been concerned with the club card.) was used to make the purchases. So what? I signed up for my club card with bogus information. Sometimes, I forget the card, and I have no idea what BS phone number I put down, so I use my boss's phone #. He must have one of those cards, it always works. But I've certainly never been asked to verify my identity when doing so.
The real moral of this story-cops and prosecutors are often overzealous. When you are on a jury, do not ask yourself "Does it look like this guy did it?" Ask yourself instead "Has it been proven to me, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this person did it? Would I stake x years of my life on the fact that this guy did it?" Because you are staking years of someone's life on your decision. If you cannot say "I am sure"-even if you can say "I'm almost sure"-the vote is not guilty. Even if the other 11 say otherwise. Stick it out and hang the jury if you have to, but do NOT condemn a person guilty unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure. People are exonerated every day because some jury thought "probably did it" equated to "for-sure did it."
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Trouble with that approach is that the records may also prove you innocent. And what about CCTV records or phone records or credit card transactions? All (or nearly all) are owned and tracked by private companies. Yet, in a lot of cases, they have been core to fingering serious criminals.
I take the 'overwhelmed by data' approach. Here in the UK, you cannot avoid being seen in high quality colour in just about any built-up area or mall. We are the most watched country in the world. Yet crime has not diminished significantly.
On the other hand, how are you going to avoid the odd mistake when law enforcement puts 2 + 2 together to make 22? For the paranoid, keep those records to an absolute minimum, I suppose. But also get yourself top notch legal insurance (you can get this with any life insurance, mortgage etc.) up to however many millions make you feel comfortable.
Overall though, the chances of this sort of thing happening are pretty low, otherwise it would not be news.
Did he inhale?
I mean it is winter, people do have fireplaces, Stores whan to ship what sells. There is a good chance the different stores will have the same brand of fires starters. Or it could have been bought from the same store. Heck really invade peoples privacy and check everyones to see if they got the fire starters to and convict them all.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Whenever they ask for one of these cards, I just
look blankly and say "My wife has one, but I,
uh...". The cashier pulls out a blank one from
her apron, runs it past the machine, and I get the
full club member discount. This has never failed.
For my Shop Rite card here in NJ they ask to see a drivers license or some form of ID. Same with a couple of the other ones I signed up for.
They have a right as well as a duty to ask for some official form of ID only when you're buying alcohol or firearms. When they ask you for some form of ID at some supermarket just ask them politely to tell you which law authorizes them to demand such personal information and then just smile and that will be the end of that in most cases. You do not want to handle such situations as if you were some kind of terrorist, just be polite and friendly, yet decisive.
One of the alternatives is to get a fake library or some other type of card and present that card pretending that it was the first card you could find (as if you misplaced your driver's license). People who check those IDs don't even care what's on the ID as long as the info is consistent. They don't even know why they are doing what they're doing, so you can just make some authentic-looking self-made club card. Sunday Book Club, Garden Club, whatever, as long as it's not Slashdot Club, they'll call the cops on you in that case. You don't have to put a photo on the card if you don't want to, just make sure the card is laminated, that will make it appear authentic enough for people not to bother asking for some other type of ID. Oh and avoid being too creative with the card design, people tend to get interested in joining clubs with pretty club membership cards. You wouldn't believe how many sales clerks have asked me about joining a certain Garden Art Club after seeing my overly artistic club card!
Just the majority, not all of them. Rainbow is big on tying all their discounts to loyalty cards where I am. It could have been the extra variety of a larger Cub store, but I would like to think when a Cub (which uses regular coupon books and newpaper coupons) dropped down about four blocks from our neighborhood Rainbow, the lack of loyalty cards was a factor in the prolonged and painful dead of that Rainbow over about nine months.
has he burned his 'loyalty card' yet?
I would suggest not doing it in his house!
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
The only way to make bogus data work, name address, etc. is to use cash 100% of the time.
The moment you tie a member card to a transaction paid by cheque, debit card or whatever, there is now a link between you and the card. From that moment on, that card, bogus data or not, will be linked to you.
That's why many stores don't care if you fill out the application using the name Micky Mouse then you turn around and pay by debit card or cheque. Or a store manager upon asking will give you a card without filling out an application and then you turn around and pay by cheque. The minute the transaction is processed, your profile, the cards data, is updated with the new information.
There's not just one name linked to a card either. Swap with friends and all that does is link another name to the card. They still have records of this person bought this and this other person bought that.
My local store, if all you tell them is you forgot your card, they say no problem and the cashier scans a store card kept at the register. So what? As long as you pay by anything other than cash, a new transaction is created that can be cross referenced back to you. You don't think for a minute that debit card numbers, bank account numbers etc. are *not* part of the member card transaction record?
Member cards were a solution to group transactions by cross reference. One household may have 6-7 methods of paying. One couple has seperate checking accounts, their own credit/debit cards, that's four methods right there. Add different credit cards and now a household may have 7 ways to pay. Member cards were introduced only to help group these transactions into a larger household picture. Household demographics is what they're after, "household" is the holy grail of demographics.
They lost this household demographic when they started to accepted plastic as payment. Ever notice member cards were not introduced until stores started taking CC/Debit cards for payments? They've been tracking purchases for 30 years. Back then, joint checking accounts were common and paying by cheque was the only method other than cash. Back then household demographics was a simplier excerise. It's worth a few cents off an inflated price to incurage you to help them group these new plastic transactions by household.
So, except that the government has caught on that this can be a wealth of information, this is nothing new. Unless you use cash 100% of the time you're not beating the system the way you think you are by filling out the application with false data.
For all of your Cash purchases. I heard the number belong to some girl named Jenny.
http://www.Slaveway.com
The supermarkets claim these cards will save you money. So if the frozen fish is $2.95 one week, and the next week it's $3.85, but you save 90 cents if you use you card, exactly how much are you actually saving? It's just a scam to make more money for the store while fooling the customers. Safeway is the worst. Check out the Wall Street Journal article on the cards. Stores without cards cost less than the stores with cards, even after the alleged "savings" from the card. Great business model, screw as many customers as possible!
By the perception of illusion, we experience reality
Ah, but you missed the small print at the end:
"Covering you supermarket card with tin foil keeps Big Brother from detecting it's presence, therefore buying you a significant measure of safety."
Meh. Not bad for 0542 in the morning if you ask me...
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Here in california you just punch in your number
at the atm/cc pad.
Ask you for your name? That's crazy
The cards seem to work right away before the customer data has been entered in the system. When I got my card, they gave me an application form and told me I could drop off the application form the next time I came in. I signed my card as Safeway Customer and never got around to giving the application form.
I've been using the card for at least 5 years now with no problems. My receipts say Welcome New Club Member! and I get the occassional odd look from clerks who are reasonably sure that I'm not a new member :)
In theory, the purchases made by me whilst using this card can be tracked. However, in order to do so, someone would have to get physical access to the card. Not impossible but I'm not worrying about it.
Scenario:
- you apply for health insurance;
- your insurer looks up your loyalty card records, and says "I see you've been buying fatty foods, pizza, chips, chocolate. "
- same insurer checks your credit card records: "I see no Gym payments here, you don't work out, do you?"
- "At least you don't smoke, then we'd refuse to insure you at all."
- "OK, we can insure you, it will just cost you much more, because of your lifestyle. We will use any excuse to charge you more."
The same goes for life insurance, or car insurance if you are noted buying alcohol.
I know about the UK Data Protection Act and similar EU laws (I'm a Brit living in Ireland) - I've had people tell me not to worry, this can't happen, the law prevents it. Yes, they do - today - but these laws were put in place by politicians, and can be nullified just as easily, if an apparent reason emerges.
Example: in the UK, what if the Health Secretary is told that prioritizing NHS treatment in this way will save £billions? There goes your legal protection. It might not need to go to a Parliament vote, with the powers (s)he already has. Checking your records for apparent negligence on your part is a lot cheaper than putting you through a physical examination, right?
(this is not a
I could use George Washington's card. They don't check those things.
The amazing thing to me is that the data that safeway, giant and all of the other supermarket chains are collecting is pretty much the holy grail of marketing. At least as far as I understand it anyway. Back in the .com hayday this was what everyone wanted to know - more and more about each customer so that the website could ostensibly be tailored to each visitor. If you had good customer data you could get almost anyone to advertise or sponsor who was interested in your segment. Near as I can tell, the supermarkets do nothing with their data in terms of customized mailings or email. Perhaps they sell all of that data but for now they don't appear to be any customer-facing promotions or activities.....
Parent is NOT paranoid but accurate. I recently met with a couple of people at the heart of Experian's IT. They stated that for their supermarket customers they did what the parent post described and quite a few things beyond that. The granularity of their data goes down to individuals' purchases of individual items, summarizing it by household is only one of the ways in which they use the data.
Oh, and they have insurance and credit info as well. And a nicely detailed GIS database. And access to car registration data. The list goes on.
Scary doesn't begin to describe it.
Cases like this just remind us that there's no such thing as anonymity, at least not anymore. Unless you live alone and isolated in a cave somewhere (or a small cabin say, heh), someone, somewhere knows who you are. So how does one deal with this? Fake data? Use cash only? Nah, just act like a celebrity! Do everything as if everyone knows who you are, what you are doing, and who you are doing it with/to. In the age of computers and the internet, we are all stars on stage.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
what about my prepaid credit card with no information tied to it?
I got a mastercard that I recharge at the local gas station.
they cant link dead data to more dead data.
shit, we were just did some digging through digital security footage from 2000. Place had cameras everywhere and it wasn't Fort Knox either, just some office building. We were looking to see if someone was in the building 4 years ago. This may not be typical but most places now are installing recorders that go to a hard drive which means you can archive it (almost) forever.
"Which is why I used a fake name and address when I signed up for my loyalty cards."
You'd better hope the address you wrote down doesn't get burnt then...!
You've got that right.
I signed up for a kroger card with a completely fake name and address, but used it with my credit card. 6 months later, I started getting packages of kroger coupons in the mail with my name and my address.
Coincidence?
(As a side note, it seems that someone else is using my account somehow... the "promotions" they run always seem to be inflated, like recently they offered a gift certificate if you spent something like $400 in a month, and when I went for the first time that month, my receipt told me that I had already spent over $200.)
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I'd be back in that store often checking when it got to $390ish.
Then do my shopping (and collect the freebie).
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Well, DUH! If you're going to commit a crime, then DON'T buy where you've already bought!!
Jeez, what a maroon.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
"fecal gardening club" sounds like a good match. Has an explanation (it's fertilizer!) and assures that no one would ever want to join it. Well, except a fecophiliac, and in that case you've usefully identified a freak.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Hopefully it wasn't $200 worth of firestarters.
Having run the loyalty card systems for this and a few other large grocery chains in the early 90's, I have seen a ton of horror stories related to the use of the data.
Some examples:
-A large chain of grocery stores that also had pharmacys sold the data about what medications their customers bought to an insurance company. The insurance company ran the medication list against each policy holder's health insurance info and then cancelled people who bought drugs like heart medication without the insurance company being aware of it.
-Another chain had a promotion tied to their loyalty cards that gave customers a turkey for Thanksgiving based on how much they spent and it also gave them more stuff is they bought specific things. When the statement of exactly what was purchased came to the chain's CEO's home, it revealed to his wife that he bought huge amounts of flowers for his mistress and it resulted in his divorce.
-A single mother who had just lost her young son in a car accident bought some baby gifts in a chain grocery store and used her frequent shopper card when she paid in order to get a small discount. The purchases of these items caused her to be flagged as a new mother and be immediately put on a ton of mailing lists relating to "the joy of motherhood", etc. Hardly a pleasant reminder after losing her only child.
I guess that my point in posting this is that the privacy issues with these cards are quite far reaching. They can have real personal impact and their use should be considered VERY CAREFULLY. They can have benefits that one might find valuable, but they can have devistating and totally unforseen consequences.
Caviat Carrier?
the records may also prove you innocent.
How, exactly?
"Hey, the fact that those firestarters *didn't* show up on my Safeway card proves that I didn't set the fire!"
"Uh-huh. Or maybe you didn't hand over your card number because you knew that we'd be able to trace it to you."
What really sucks is yesterday, without that card my groceries for the family would have cost $75 more.
It is pretty frustrating. It's not like you can't get cash without 'someone' knowing about it somewhere.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Fertilizer can be used to make home-made bombs and in some countries you cannot just buy them, you have to show your ID and stuff.
Let me tell you something even worse. I was in the university, living in Turkey at the time (I have parents from Turkey and Britain so I have dual nationality).
One day coming back from the university I misjudged the fuel in my motorcycle's tank and got stranded on my way back home. It simply ran out of fuel. I hitched a hike to the nearest filling station and tried to buy some fuel. They wouldn't sell it to me!!
Apparently some law has been passed so that I had to present myself to the Police or Gendermarie (if it was out of the town, which I was) with my ID, licence and everything. So did I. It took three hours to get 2L of fuel and get my motorbike running again.
It was so annoying. I like where I live now, there is no legal ID card. I carry my british passport with me sometime in case some nutter home minister tries to lock me in without going through the law system. Apparently that'll be a part of the history soon, England will have to lock people in their own houses, even to British.
Civic liberties are very important and using terrorrist treat like a carrot on a stick, Western governments have been eroding our rights so badly. Even worse, they make it sound like they are doing a service to us. Since 9/11 how many terrorist attacks were done in USA? UK? There was the Madrid bombing and that's all. Spaniards were fascists for the last 75 years, I don't expect them to change their attitute just because now they are a part of the EU but countries like UK, USA, France have been the bastion of the western society and in UK and USA governments have been pushing these draconian laws with no problem.
You will only find out when you just can't buy some fuel for your stranded bike.
When you lose something you will not find it out before you really need it. My small experience with draconian Turkish laws thought me that.
PS: Why I couldn't buy the fuel? Because you can make Molotov coctails with soap and fuel. Just mix it in 1/3 ratio and put it in a wine bottle (Empty the bottle first, cheers). Wet the wick with the fuel and wrap it around the neck of the bottle neatly. Burn it before you throw it and don't hold it in your hand once you burn it. From where did I get this recipe for Molotov coctail? I was 10 and had a Encyclopedia Brittanica and it gave me all I needed. Thanks Comrade Molotov!
if the purchases were made with a scanned card- kinda hard to argue it was someone else...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I personally don't feel like it is a supermarket's place to get involved in catching criminals
Personally I'd say it's everyone's job, at least for actual violent crimes.
Say down the road you get involved in a lawsuit and the opposition subpoenas your shopping record.
OK...You're assuming I'm actually doing something wrong and need to hide my shopping record.
Or an ex-spouse uses your file to show that you're not a fit parent. (After all, what fit parent buys condoms? Or beer? Or cholesterol-laden mocha fudge ripple ice cream?)
That's pretty ridiculous (or is it paranoid, I guess it depends if you were serious or not).
Once information about your shopping habits is stored somewhere it will hang like ripe fruit; anyone who can get a warrant or a subpoena will have a wealth of information that can be distorted to make you look bad.
There's already a wealth of information that can be distorted to make me look bad. Any information can be distrorted to make me look bad. Doesn't mean information is bad.
The only way to prevent these abuses of your shopping information is to make sure it is never collected in the first place.
Better yet, be extra careful when you're purchasing something that is being used in a crime. Then you can use the lack of records of the crime as a positive in your favor.
That's disgusting!
Now, grape jelly on the other hand...
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
No - if they track whether it was swiped or manually entered, and it was swiped, it's kind of hard to argue that it wasn't that card.
They don't actually ID the person swiping the card, you know. So arguing it was somone else is easy.
- You could be accused of crime based almost solely on things you bought at the store. The dude put out the fire and called 911. Not exactly a bright arsonist, now is he? I blame the prosecutors as much as the cops. Who looks at a shopping receipt and a tracking dog and thinks they have a case against the person who put the fire out? And the dude was a fire fighter. You'd think someone with intimate knowledge of the business could come up with something that isn't going to leave as much evidence behind.
- Once information about you exists somewhere it can be used for things you might not be able to envision at the time you turned the information over. You bought kerosene for a space heater, fertilzer for your lawn, some batteries and a spare garage door opener because your wife's car is a purse on wheels and she lost it. Then one day Homeland Security is showing up at your door. Unfortunately that's not unreasonably paranoid these days.
Still think you have nothing to hide? What's really pathetic is that people who really know trade craft and are willing to actually do something bad with those materials also know how to make it difficult to track their purchases. If they have an organized network some of those materials may have been purchased months or years previously by middle buyers now long gone who had no idea why they were buying two tons of fertilizer a few bags at a time.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Wow! It seems tied to the whippin' post should be the theme song. It's the same type of logic that says: "Yeah, when the cop beats the shit out of me, I just ask to be fucked up the ass. It really irritates them."
Nary a thought as to if the collection of your personal information should happen at all.
And as you can give the phone number of your boss, don't forget your boss can do the same to you.
I don't see how this helps.
Or someone else who had access to the firestarters. The guy could have denied that he bought them when the cops asked if he had, trying to deny that he had anything to do with it (because he didn't). Lots of people's first instinct is to avoid any appearance of association with a bad act, especially when confronted by police, even if it can make them look more guilty later. In the moment, it's easier to deny, than to get arrested and convince the judge instead of just the cop.
--
make install -not war
1) when using these store discount cards, are only the
discounted items kept in store records?
No; the store will usually keep a record of everything that you bought. The purpose is marketing, after all. The more information they have that can be linked to you, the better they can product targetted ads that will encourage you to buy.
2) when paying with credit card, are the stores retaining
a list of my purchases linked to my card?
Yes. That's one of the important reasons that credit cards exist. 30 years ago, disk space was expensive, so not everything was kept (and most of it was on tape). Now, terabyte disks are cheap, so there's no reason not to keep any purchase information that can be captured. Chances are that every purchase you've made with a credit/debit card in the past decade is recorded and sitting on a disk somewhere, quickly accessible to marketing software.
So far, tracking a cash purchase is not very feasible. But they're working on it.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I, for one, do not welcome our club card overlords.
I shop at Publix, I fairly major chain in Florida, and they don't have any loyalty card system. They post discounts on certain items very clearly, and if you buy it, you get the discount. No membership card is needed, ever. Now I'm sure they could track your purchases if you use the same credit card over and over, but regardless it was nice to find a store that did this.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
Lately there have been an increase in this types of events. If you value your privacy and anonymity you should never give your real data if you get a supermarket card, supposed you want to use one at all.
All I can think of is that somehow the act of getting a member card is an authorization for them to collect that information. Or the other purpose of the loyalty card is to encourage loyalty. that is to be able to offer you progessive discounts as you use it more: for example my store occasionally offers promos where you get a prize after so many visits or dollars spent.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
And "faire le 22" ("doing the 22") means keeping a lookout for the cops.
Shopping for the tools for your next crime? Pay cash, don't buy locally, and FOR GOD SAKE DON'T USE A #$@# SHOPPER'S CLUB CARD!
Trust me, getting caught won't justify the $0.30 savings you got on the matches and lighter fluid.
I don't know who's stupider: An arsonist who actually used a shopper's club card, or the police for assuming the arsonist was so stupid as to use a shopper's club card (and not to frame someone else). You would THINK the latter would be one of the first hypotheses entertained by the police before they go off and charge the guy whose name is attached to the card.
Naturally, Monk solved the case when he noticed an admission stamp to the museum on the back of the bad guy's wrist. But you can't always count on Monk to be on the case.
clearly it was Mr Plum in the living room with the grill starter
That's not much an endorsement. Sure, the guy is a fire chief but does CYA really demand he take the position that the courts are infallable? He could have just said something vague about sympathy.
Am I the only one thinking Backdraft?
Better than to always use cash is to use it only when you're gonna buy the bomb ingredients or whatever they are looking for now.
Like any predictable system, this one can be exploited by a motivated attacker. Buy all your eggs, meat and milk with the discount card and buy your fertilizer and detonating garage door opener with cash, at a different shop. This way you game the system to make you seem inocent, and they'll end up arresting some poor schmuck, like, well, the article in this story.
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
I guess I have more faith in the system.
I don't.
Here in Illinois, 50% of those on death row were proven by genetic analysis to be innocent of the crimes of which they had been convicted.
50%.
One in two people sentenced to death had been wrongly convicted, and were only exonerated pre-mortem because they happen to have enough appeals in place to postpone their executions until a technology came along able to prove they weren't the culprits. These people were in some cases convicted on evidence a hell of a lot more flimsy than a Safeway Club Card purchasing record, and they were sentenced to die.
The numbers were so horrific that our Governor at the time, a Republican who until then had supported the death penalty, placed a moratorium on all further executions in the state, and rightly so.
Of course, this "new" technology, like any other, is falable, and in a case like this one (where everything's gone up in smoke, and where the accused lived there anyway) entirely inapplicable, so lest someone think "but now we have this new panacea, so it won't happen anymore" I can only say, don't kid yourself.
Justice in America is appallingly hap-hazard. Police are lazy. They latch onto a theory they like and make the facts fit their expectations. The lose, damage, and misinterpret evidence all the time. District Attorney's persue careers based on rates of conviction, and often have little concern for the actual guilt or innocence of those they are convicting (there have been a couple in recent memory here in Chicago who have been proven to knowingly convict innocent people, in at least one case because he was more interested in putting the scapegoat behind bars and looking good to an angry public than in serving justice).
Having served on a couple of juries, I can say from my own experience that juries are faced with severely filtered and diluted information, outright misinformation, and a great deal of emotional manipulation from both sides. Their odds of getting something right don't seem to be much higher than what we would get if we simply flipped a coin to determine guilt or innocence.
I understand people who break and run when accused of a crime they didn't commit. The prisons are full of people wrongly convicted, and the streets with people who got away scot-free (and of course the opposite is also true, the prisons are also full of guilty people correctly convicted, and the streets with people justly acquited). It is an utter crapshoot as to whether or not you are correctly found guilty or notguilty, or incorrectly found notguilty or guilty, and this guy got incredibly lucky.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
there's no safeways up here in MA, but at the other chains (stop&shop, CVS, big Y, etc.) you're given one big card (credit card size) and two or three key-chain size cards. what this means is that there's multiple copies of each cards. so what i've done with friends in the past is swapped my extra stop&shop card for his extra cvs card. it's not too far-fetched to imagine someone else using an actual scanned card. since they all have exactly the same barcode (by definition - same account), it would be hard to keep track of which one of those cards was used.
... they give you frequent flyer miles when you use your Safeway card!
Until technology to somehow photocopy a barcode is developed, of course.
At some point in my junior year of college, my Giant card got switched with my Dutch foreign exchange roomate's card. I didn't realize this until years later, and I've never bothered to get a new card - so "Giant" thinks I'm someone who hasn't been in the US in four years.
This was unintentional, and I don't really stay awake at night worrying if Giant knows what I bought there, but I still get a kick out of getting receipts showing how much "Ronald" has saved so far this year.
I have blog like everyone else
Your safeway card is just passed through a card reader, they don't even check to see if it matches the name on the credit card or check (or they don't care).
If you forget your card, then you can give a phone number.
My card was in my stepfather's name for years after he moved 400 miles away. I still got the discounts even when using my own phone number to identify my card.
Now, when the prosecutor uses that to get a warrant, there isn't anything you can really do about it, but the evidence would not be nearly adequate as proof because no one can prove that you're the only one using your Safeway card.
Go on, get going. Find a better place to live in freedom. Try France. They are very open and honest about what's going on in their government.
I lived in California for a while, and while this story may be largely hearsay, I avoided Safeway nonetheless:
"A man was walking around Safeway when he slipped and fell (on a spill). He was injured, and carted away by an ambulance.
He had medical bills, and he asked that the Safeway reimburse him, since it was their spill. They refused. Eventually, the man took Safeway to court.
In court, Safeway used the record of his purchases, obtained from his loyalty card, to show that he purchased an amount of liquor greater than that of most people. The defense claimed that since he was more likely to be intoxicated than most people, he was also more prone to falls.
Safeway won the case."
That could very well just be rumour, but I'm sure it's based on something. Given that this story has appeared, I'm more likely to believe in it... so keep in mind such things if you shop at Safeway.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
They can probably cross reference the purchases you made with the use of a club card.
Is it really worth the $.50? Seriously, these cards don't save anyone much of anything. Unles of course, you go out and only buy what is on sale. But if that's the case, you're probably eating so much shit that you've got bigger problems on your hands.
There is a reason we have rules on gathering evidence. For example, going into someone's financial records without anything more than a hunch is just that.
I've been saying for years that investigative techniques for computer crime are insufficient - maybe it's across the board.
Think it would help if we pulled shows like CSI and Law&Order off the air?
- You don't need to present a shred of identification to get a card -- you don't even have to give the right address, since they give it to you right when you apply for it.
- You don't even need an actual card -- stores will allow you to enter a phone number in place of swiping the card -- and there's no way for them to know if you enter the right number.
If this was critical evidence in their case, they didn't have a case. (In which case, it's no surprise they jumped on the 3rd party who came forward to confess).150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
Many people spend months in jail while awaiting trial. So it's also a problem with the judicial system.
That was not the case here, but even if you're not in jail, the prospect of jail is a very stressful and disruptive experience: You need to appear in court multiple times, and perhaps pay for lawyers and bail. It also destroys relationships and careers, so it's really a problem with society as a whole.
1) get a job with an emergency response/first responder entity (fire department, forest ranger, search/rescue, anbulance driver)
2) make friends with a cop/civil "servant"/datamining contractor employee. Ask for a favor.
3) develop a grudge, hate your lifestyle, or figure out a way to profit from a crime.
4) don't do it again.
We'll be the second coming of the DDR in another 20 years. At least then I can retire, and ignore some of the backstabbing.(yes, on my own means -- what, you thought SS would be there? Hah.)
I forget what 8 was for.
Actually the Molotov cocktail was a Finnish invention. It was an improvised antitank device used in the 1939-40 Soviet attack on Finland. Molotov was the Soviet foreign minister at the time.
Perhaps one of Linus Torvalds' family used one. The defense of Finland in that case was a costly affair, and ultimately they were forced to concede to the Soviets.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
You would think (as I'm sure most people do) that the error rate would be less for capital crimes than for minor ones, but there are reasons to suppose that the reverse is actually true. The heinous, high-profile crimes generally come with a lot of media and political pressure on police and prosecutors. They may respond to that pressure by grabbing the first plausible suspect that comes along, especially if that suspect is unable to mount a competent legal defense. They become heroes for nabbing a "perpetrator", and at that point it becomes very difficult to turn back, even when exculpatory evidence starts popping up inconveniently. Even when intentions are honorable (and they often aren't), it's easy to force the facts to fit and simply ignore the ones that don't.
On top of all that, there's a conservative wind blowing in this country that insists on being "tough" on everybody, guilty or not. The raw need to punish somebody then overrides any concerns about guilt or innocence, as far as the body politic is concerned.
For those who haven't been on a jury, this case illustrates how easily people can get tried and convicted on circumstantial evidence. This particular case is more the exception than the rule unfortunately: exonerating evidence in the form of a confession got him off the hook. Plenty more people get sent to jail for long hauls on far less evidence here in the US. Then consider the death penalty cases...
Loyalty programs don't necessarily mean higher prices. Our hardware store uses a loyalty program in order to offer special prices and rebates to our top customers. Our prices did not go up when we started the program, and we still run occasional sales that don't require a loyalty card. We ask for an address on the card application so we can mail the rebate check. We ask for a birthday (month only, and it's optional) so we can send a $10 certificate redeemable that month. Yes, if we wanted to we could discover who bought a plunger to clear their stopped up toilet, or who bought paint chemicals that could be used to make drugs. However, we also can look up your sale so you can return something even if you lost the receipt. We can reprint a receipt quickly if you need it for your taxes or a warranty repair.
Obviously you give up a bit of information to gain some benefit, and that's the case in a myriad of things we do each day. You provide info for credit card applications, job applications, drivers license applications, purchasing items online, etc.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Don't even give them your name and address. I've got a loyalty card from one of the major supermarkets here in the southwestern US. They ofered me the form and the card at the same time. I told them I didn't have time to fill it out now, so they told me to just return the form next time I was in. So I walked out the door and threw the form in the trash. The next time I was there, they swiped my card and I got all the discounts.
And they don't even know that I exist.
What is your penile percentile?
I got the Safeway Club card at checkout. The employee said, "Here's the form, just fill it out. But you can have the card now."
I happily took the card and tossed the application when I returned home. I thought I had bested the system. Anonymous discounts.
I used my club card - and my debit card - to make purchases over the next few weeks and lo and behold but what should appear in my mail box? Safeway circulars. How am I receiving circulars with my name on it if they didn't somehow pull my name & address off the debit card? Which means I didn't need to fill out the club card application, they've likely already databased me from the debit card. Lovely.
I guess they're within their rights, but it feels slimy to me and I'm not happy about it.
For the real paranoids: Grocery stores that use these cards often give you one large card for your wallet and two small ones for your key-ring. Most people pop the large one into their wallet and toss out the rest of the packaging.
I find about one a week on the sidewalk outside the QFC grocery store.
Use that and pay in cash and Big Grocery Brother will give you your "discount" without being able to compile a list of what kind of toilet paper feels most comfortable against your hairy ass.
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
Finland continued their fight against Soviets in their so-called Continuation War after the Winter war. They only admitted defeat in 1944. That stage of the war is a little bit of controversial because they had to align themselves with Germans. Before that they were alone fighting the Soviets. Britain promised to help them but that never materialised.
- Cop buys fire starter for his barbecue
- Cop barbecues hamburgers
- Cop has leftover firestarter, and puts it away
- (small) Kid finds firestarter and matches and plays with them in a closet or the carport, etc
- Fire gets out of hand, and kid is afraid of being caught, so runs away
- Wife finds fire...
Except for the being a cop part, this happened to my Dad's basement suite tennant and the fire burned down my dad's house.Not very safe after all, is it?
I've always avoided loyalty cards. But I make most of my purchases with a debit card. Now that I think about it, I figure this is probably just as bad. I might as well just use a loyalty card and save some money... or else start paying cash.
...a scanned card- kinda hard to argue it was someone else...
That assumes they got the correct information when the card was obtained the first time. There is no law that says the info you give them when getting a card has to be yours. Give them the phone number of a payphone at a local pub or the phone number of the police chief.
All theory is gray
Soem day INS is going to show up at your door, looking to arrest 'Ronald' for overstaying his student visa --- all based on gorcery purchases.
This story reminds me of why I put fake info on those supermarket cards. BUT then I realized that if I pay with my credit card the same thing can happen. What a mess.
Off the top of my head, there's a max of 30 gallons, one vehicle, discounts can come from only one card number per purchase, and your total discount can't exceed the regular price of gas.
I always use it on my vehicle with the larger tank, and let it get down as low as I dare. (Somewhat risky in winter.) That's the best I can do.
A few more things that bother me about it though:
You don't even have to show ID if you know the phone number attached to the card. You simply key it in at the terminal and no questions are ever asked.
What is the phone number keyed to the card? You guessed it, 9 times out of 10, its the home phone number.
That the government would use this data...it's beyond irresponsible.
That episode where they would arrest people based purely on matching personality records to crime profiles. I believe this only happened to people who had bad credit records. (Why punish consumers when there are non-contributing blanks taking up space in the Corporate machine?)
That show was visionary, and to think that it was a spin-off from a Coke-ad character. (Or am I remembering that incorrectly? It was twenty years ago, after all!)
-FL
We know the name, marital status, and grocery affiliation of the innocent victim, but we don't even know the gender of the person who admitted guilt? What is wrong with this picture?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>That's why many stores don't care if you fill out
>the application using the name Micky Mouse then you
> turn around and pay by debit card or cheque.
Actually, they don't care, because all they want to do is count the minutes until they can get the hell out of the shithole where they work, for minimum wage, with a total asshole manager who is more interested in how many club card signups they get, than whether they live or die.
You think the checker at Safeway gives a fuck about you or what you put on your club card application?
I'd hate to see what my Safeway shopping card would get me arrested for.
Since when is a store loyalty card a legal record of what you've bought? You get three of them when you first sign up, and promptly lose/give away the ones you don't keep.
This is why the last time I needed a new card, I just gave a false name, address, ect.
Face it; most people are idiots. They are easily swayed by ad populum arguments. If I'm ever on trial, I don't want a jury of idiots. I think every jury member should have to pass a test on logical fallacies.
All they have to do is apply for a card in your name.
Since the card is not mailed to you, but handed to you on the spot at the store, there's nothing stopping anyone from applying in your name and making purchases as: you.
The first time I borrowed my girlfriend's safeway card and payed with credit, the register briefly said "unrecognized credit" or "check card" or something to that effect; this was a while ago so I forgot exactly what it said. This message has not come up again when I borrow her card, so obviously my credit card is now linked to it. Maybe they have a policy to ask you about using the wrong 'bonus' card (ie for legal reasons), but never do.
If they just collected biometrics at the supermarket it would avoid this kind of misunderstanding.
Actually, the Safeway Club Card only requires that the user enter his telephone number via the keypad. No ID required beyond that to get in on the savings. It's Secure! They Promise!
i read that title as "boson argon arrest"
i was quite interested until i realized my mistake...now it's just boring arson.
BUT... Use your ATM/Debit card and they can still coordinate your name, etc., with the discount card.
Wait a few years, when the facial-recognition camera technology is 'Good Enough' and 'Cheap Enough' to be used for anti-theft at your local store. Won't matter even if you pay cash. Eventually, they'll just hook up to the DMV, and then with the credit bureaus, and then with the various police agencies, and soon you'll never be anonymous anywhere anytime again. No mistakes, no forgiveness, no forgetting. Isn't life wonderful, kids?
Bah. This is more of an arguement against circumstantial evidence than against the evils of store discount cards. Nothing to see here.
Well, how about if the cops suspected that the (kid/wife ) did it and used the ploy of charging the father in order to get the (kid/wife) to confess. You know, like a "Monk" episode :-)
Life is like gravity. It sucks you down.
So basically anyone who has my phone number can "frame" me. I never carry my card for Albertsons and I just give them my phone number everytime.
My Weblog
There was a story reported a long time ago about a dba in a bank who was requested to create a form letter to the richest of the banks customers ...
...
The letter read 'Dear Rich Bastard'
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
...and they did a rather disturbing little demonstration of it:
http://www.aclu.org/pizza/
If you really think that it's no big deal to be charged with (or even be investigated as the primary suspect for) a crime you didn't commit is no big deal, I suggest you try and remember what this guy went through.
You don't need to do anything wrong to have your life completely fucked up by the system. It takes nothing more than a random coincidence or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Let's say one weekend you need to fertilize your lawn and change the oil in your car, so you head out and buy a case of motor oil and a 50# bag of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Nothing suspicious about those purchases, until a few weeks later when some nutjob decides to set off a bomb and is seen leaving the scene of the crime.
Unfortunately for you, the perp is the same race and hair color as you and is of a similar height and body type, and was driving a car that's the same body style and color as yours. Now, thanks to your innocent purchases, you're the #1 suspect in a high-profile case.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Exactly why I tell the checker I do not have a club card, request one, and pay in cash with every transaction. IMO no supermarket has the right to collect personally identifiable information on my purchases for whatever purpose they choose.
Interesting note about credit card swiping vs. manual entry, and identity theft. If a store swipes a card, and it turns out to be a fraudulent charge, it's the bank that takes the hit -- but if the store manually keys in the card, the store has to take the hit.
This was explained to me after my wife and I suffered THREE separate instances of fraudulent transactions on three separate bank cards with three separate numbers, all in a period of about four months. The idea is to prevent stores from keying in any old random number that someone provides with an "I forgot my card" excuse, secure in the knowledge that the bank would take the hit if it was a rip-off.
Incidentally, we started having the problems after switching banks in Chicago (the first time, I hadn't even received my card yet!) and the problems stopped as soon as we changed banks again. Not surprisingly, the bank manager had no interest -- and I mean NO interest whatsoever -- in pursuing the persons responsible. I always assumed it was an inside job. Four years later we visited, and the bank had shut down.
On preview: no pun intended.
Not only should we give bogus data on the cards, but we should all swap them with other people as often as possible. Bonus points for swapping with someone from another state.
That way, even if you have to use your own data it will quickly become disassociated with you.
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
Hiding something is not an admission of guilt, or of a crime, or even of anti-social behaviour.
If you are one of those poor deluded idiots who believe that because you've "done nothing wrong" you have nothing to fear, then I challenge you to do this:
(Next month do it with your medical records, including details of past illnesses - physical and mental, bogus sick days, prescription drugs, etc, etc )
If you are willing to do this, then you have a defensible contribution to public debate and I'll give you some of my time to listen to you defend it.
If you're not willing to do it, then you just don't understand the issue and are simply making some noise
Everybody has something to hide. Period. Full stop. Exclamation mark.
And they are absolutely right, and entitled to do so
There is no freedom without privacy
My 2c worth
If you'd bothered to pay attention, the guy in TFA wasn't doing anything wrong, yet he was charged with a felony based largely on his shopping record.
Yes, but your comment was that I'm already involved in the lawsuit. If so, then my shopping records are more likely to exonerate me than incriminate me, assuming I'm actually innocent. By the way, I think you're jumping to conclusions saying the guy wasn't doing anything wrong. I've seen no proof of that. I also think it's quite a leap to say that the charges were based largely on his shopping records. The shopping records just lent credence to the evidence that the dogs pointed to - that the fire starter was purchased by a member of the household.
If you really think that it's no big deal to be charged with (or even be investigated as the primary suspect for) a crime you didn't commit is no big deal, I suggest you try and remember what this guy went through.
No, I just think you're taking things completely unrelated to each other to try to prove a point about shopping records. Can shopping records be used in a bad way by ill-intentioned or incompetant people. Sure. But that doesn't make them necessarily bad. Just about anything can be used in a bad way.
You don't need to do anything wrong to have your life completely fucked up by the system. It takes nothing more than a random coincidence or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I have to disagree here. The system isn't screwing up your life. It's an incompetant or ill-intentioned person or people that are screwing it up. Yes, I agree the system has room for improvement. But I didn't think we were talking about the system here anyway. We were talking about shopping records.
Let's say one weekend you need to fertilize your lawn and change the oil in your car, so you head out and buy a case of motor oil and a 50# bag of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Nothing suspicious about those purchases, until a few weeks later when some nutjob decides to set off a bomb and is seen leaving the scene of the crime.
Unfortunately for you, the perp is the same race and hair color as you and is of a similar height and body type, and was driving a car that's the same body style and color as yours. Now, thanks to your innocent purchases, you're the #1 suspect in a high-profile case.
So you can set up a hypothetical situation where shopping records might be that piece of evidence that moves you into a new category of level of suspicion (maybe, just the same race, hair color, height, body type, and car is enough to make you the #1 suspect if there's no other suspect with that same profile and you aren't able to be eliminated by some other criteria).
His house was set on fire.
He was charged with and arrested for arson.
And then the charges were dismissed.
What part of this story is "happy"?
What part of the word "ending" don't you understand, O Great Four-digited One?
Mod parent up.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
IANAL, but by themselves, records from these cards should not even be considered probable cause, given the the complete lack of any kind of authentication. At the Safeway by my house in Maryland, you can just punch in your phone number, no questions asked.
This is not necessarily a problem with the cards themselves--it is a problem with the misuse of the raw data at the wrong level of granularity. The point of supermarket loyalty cards is to find trends that can be used for marketing purposes. As such, the standard of accuracy for any *individual transaction* is not necessarily that stringent, because what counts is the *aggregate* after individual errors cancel out. The probability for error with any individual transaction is too high to throw someone in jail over that alone, even temporarily.
Perhaps there's a case for wrongful arrest here, given the way that the charges seemed to rely entirely on the abuse and misinterpretation of data. More likely, though, the man should consider suing Safeway for damages stemming from mis-representing the data to the police in a way that construed more accuracy to individual transactions than it deserves.
the prosecutor should be thanking his lucky stars someone came forward because he would have received the public spanking of a lifetime, taking a half arsed case like that to court
-- Howto: Get +5 (1) Whine about M$ (2) Namedrop Gentoo (3) Casually Abuse Mods (4) Namedrop Early Computer Model
I'm in OH, where it's expensive (Giant Eagle) vs. expensiver (Kroger). To add insult to injury, to get prices comparable to the other chain (particularly when Big Bear existed), you had to have the Kroger card and register all of you purchases on it (because most of their products have "bonuses" for their cards). Between that and Kroger's decision to jettison half of their checkers for a "self-serve" model (high prices and I get to do my own checking. Wow!), I dislike Kroger intensely.
That said, I don't mind the cards as much as I should. If they're going to do this, though, then the card should probably be signed to George W. Bush and addressed to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Using Richard Jewell as an example isn't helping your case.
Whenever I hear that name I don't think "Olympic Park bombing", I think "Man who was falsely accused of the Olympic Park bombing". Almost anyone who still recognizes the name knows he's innocent.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Yes, he didn't get "serious" jail time but are you saying that nothing bad happened to him because he didn't go to jail? He was slandered in the local media, he had to pay thousands for legal representation (which he will never get back), he had to miss work, be away from family, go through booking, sit in a cell with criminals, eat the crappy food, be asked personal questions by the police, be bulied by the police and accused of twisted acts, and who knows what else. Not exactly something to look forward to.
Why do they issue the cards if they ignore all the data on them and could just use a store card for all the purchases?
Apparently you don't believe in it.
Is to trade cards with strangers and always pay with cash.
I don't know whose discount club cards I have anymore. The last time I traded mine was with a couple from Alaska(I live in Texas). So as far as I know, Brookshires now thinks I live in AK and a couple from AK has moved to TX.
After you trade, don't use plastic to pay, ever. If you do, they'll be able to re-associate their card with the credit card.
It's easy, next time you go to the store just ask the person next to you in line if they are worried about privacy issues. If they say yes, offer to trade cards. You will certainly be able to defeat any sort of "police" action associated with the cards as well.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO