Big brother is shopping with you. Last weekend, I went into the Walgreens convenience store in my town to develop a roll of film that I had exposed during my vacation on Cape Cod. I filled out the form, got out my money, and waited to hand a coupon to the sales clerk when she demanded my name and email address. I refused to give it to her and asked if it were optional.No.I said that I did not want to give out that information. No. She went to get her manager. A heavyset, middle-aged man with Coke-bottle glasses and a lazy eye walked behind the counter and lectured me as to why I need to provide this information. His logic was circular and replete with meaningless stories. Needless to say, this speech hardly made me any more comfortable about giving my information to their electronic database. I reluctantly agreed, issued a pseudonym and fake email address, and left in a pensive state.
Why? This is not just another article written by a self-righteous Republican lamenting for the days before wiretapping and warrantless searches. On the contrary, while I do decry such governmental seizures of rights, I mean to address something much more personal. Something that does not just happen during news reports on television to someone somewhere. Something that happens nearly every day that we leave our house.Something that we willingly partake in. Perhaps I may sound a bit paranoid as I write this,but perhaps paranoia is what it takes to preserve my identity.Here’s to the downfall of personal privacy as a result of retail scanner cards, discount cards,member cards,debit cards, and credit cards.
Before I begin, let me acknowledge that the problems of preserving privacy extend further back than the little plastic bar codes that dangle off of the average consumer’s keychain. We citizens of the United States can never truly have complete privacy as long as we are paying taxes.There is nowhere that we can go that would exempt us from Social Security and federal taxes,and if one were as bold as to try tax evasion, the punishment is usually federal prison. Some have even tried to fake their deaths (the only real way to be free), but they have almost unanimously been caught.These very broad infringements of personal privacy,however,are largely unavoidable and therefore not the topic of my discussion.
Consider this. Every time I pick up a prescription at CVS Pharmacy, I get, “Do you have a CVS card, sir?” No. My prescription information in the pharmacy is covered by the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a federal law that puts much value on patient confidentiality, but with my CVS card, the information is disseminated into the realm of consumerism. The corporation now knows that someone getting prescription X also likes to buy chocolate and uses a certain brand of deodorant.
It is not difficult to see why a company would want this information, all guised under the pretense of consumers’ needs. More obviously,though,is that the information is to find out how better to tailor a business to sell more. The grocery store Stop & Shop has years of information about my mother’s food shopping. They know exactly what she buys and when.They know that we have a dog (pet food), that maybe her kids went off to college (less shopping during the school year), and that there is someone old living in the house (hair dye). And all of this is done with the “consumer in mind.”Many of the discounts and sales inside these stores are only available to those who have the scanner card,making it practical for the shopper to use one. A simple ruse to get goldmines of consumer data. Few know that if you do not have a card, they can scan a generic one at the counter that offers the same discounts.
Further, while debit and credit cards are not used as marketing tools to the extent that discount scanner cards are in retail stores, they too violate our personal privacy in ways much more subtle that often go unnoticed. If required by law, every purchase can be mapped along a route demarcated by gasoline purchase.Suddenly,even your movement around this “free”
country has become monitored.The only safe option is to make all purchases with cash.
Privacy is not an issue to be taken lightly. Many identities have been stolen, jobs lost, and lives ruined as a result of an exploitation of personal information. The most disturbing fact, however, is the willingness that most consumers have in handing it all over to a corporation in efforts to save a few cents on every purchase.It may seem harmless to scan the bar code for savings,but one must consider the consequences.Why do you think that businesses make it so easy for you to do this? Why do they provide cards to attach to your key chain? It is all because they have found the best marketing tool there is – a consumer survey that involves close to no effort on behalf of shopper and consent that is easily signed away when registering for it.
Perhaps some people do not object to improving the shopping experience by allowing the stores to customize to their customers,but beneath the surface it is easy to see how this all is very detrimental.The more that people know about you,the less secure you are and the more can be held and used against you. Paranoia? No doubt, but my personal liberty rests on it.
