"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
I do find it pretty sadly ironic that all the computerized/automated
stuff we all dreamed of in the 1960s is perceived by a small (but
vocal) minority who believe them to be threat to our privacy.

It's only a "small minority" because the number of people who actually stop
to think about the issue (or any issue, for that matter) is small. The main
reason most people don't care is because they have much more immediate
issues to deal with, such as putting food on the table.

That doesn't mean it's not a legitimate issue.

Personally, I am happy when my pizza delivery place knows who I am --
it saves time and hassle. However, I really don't like it much when
the video place knows that we returned our last movie late, and that we
owe a $2 late fee -- but, hey, that goes with the territory.

I don't think it's inappropriate for any retailer to maintain records like
that. As you say, it can greatly enhance convenience, and in many cases
allows the retailer to serve you better.

The problem is that the use of the data doesn't stop there. It can be used
by the retailer in less-than-honorable ways, including selling the data to
third party who aggregrates a lot of seemingly unrelated information and
discovers new and irritating ways to take advantage of it (and you). There
does need to be legal standards about how information collected about you
can be used.

One of the biggest problems is that those third parties who aggregate the
information are a lot better at marketing their efforts than making them
accurate. Unfortunately, a lot of other third parties, from government
officials to investigators to legal staff to businesses, believe the
information to be much more reliable than it is. The databases have lots of
errors in them, and they presume to have an accurate record of your life
when in fact they often don't. Pity the poor person who as a result of
inaccurate and negative information in these big databases winds up being
deprived of something they need, or perhaps even arrested.

Of course (to bring this back to aviation), the TSA has avoided all of these
issues by relying on just a name. After all, a person's name is unique,
right? It makes perfect sense to deny boarding or otherwise subject a
person to increased scrutiny and invasive searches if their name shows up on
a list provided by other government officials. And I'm sure that a name
never shows up on that list as a result of data that's been aggregated by
all those innocent sources you're referring to.

Right?

Pete