$640.00 to fill the tanks...

Martin Hotze wrote:
On Sat, 19 Aug 2006 05:35:51 GMT, Matt Whiting wrote:


It is not =my= shopping at WalMart

that invades my privacy, it is the result of =other= people shopping
there that does.

This makes no sense at all. How so?


profiling.

profiling can also be done with knowing all the facts about the people
around you. eg: the percentage of dogfood sold in your neighborhood is
higher than average. Then one can assume that you too might have a dog
(without knowing that you buy dogfood).

Bunk. Assuming stuff about me doesn't invade my privacy. People had
done that for centuries. It is called gossip.

I never realized that Wal-Mart generated so much paranoia.

Matt

profiling can also be done with knowing all the facts about the people
around you. eg: the percentage of dogfood sold in your neighborhood is
higher than average. Then one can assume that you too might have a dog
(without knowing that you buy dogfood).


Bunk. Assuming stuff about me doesn't invade my privacy. People had done that for centuries. It is called gossip.

That depends on how reliable the assumptions are, and what the
consequences are. With networked computers doing the assuming, and the
consequenting, you may find that your life is "personalized for your
benefit" by entities over which you have no control.

Jose
--
The monkey turns the crank and thinks he's making the music.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

It is not =my= shopping at WalMart that invades my privacy, it is the result of =other= people shopping there that does.
This makes no sense at all. How so?

What invades my privacy (or will in the future) is the proliferation of
RFID tags on products. It's not happening much yet so people who are
concerned are dismissed as tin hats. But it is not difficult to imagine
a future in which almost all items are implanted with RFID tags, and
RFID readers are cheap (i.e. you could get them at Radio Shack for $35).
In such a case, stores, bars, restaurants, and other venues might
install the devices to keep track of customers the same way cookies are
used to keep track of web visitors, and for the same reason. The
plethora of items carried on one's person could not only be pretty
reliable a guide as to who you are, but as these items appear in
combination with other items, they are a guide as to who you associate
with. This would be incredibly valuable information if it could be
sifted through by powerful computers. It would be (deemed to be) useful
in crime investigations, border patrol, terrorist prevention, and if the
country keeps going in the political direction is it heading, could be
quite scary.

For this to happen, RFID tags would need to be implanted in a sufficient
number of innocuous devices, and this is something that would not happen
unless somebody can benefit financially from it. Well, big box stores
can reap significant savings by using RFID tags, and WalMart has enough
clout with manufacturers (themselves pretty big entities) to entice them
to do so. They are already doing so with other things. And when
products are made to Walmart specifications, everybody gets them that
way, whether I buy at Walmart or not.

I suppose I could walk around naked.

Jose
--
The monkey turns the crank and thinks he's making the music.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:

It is not =my= shopping at WalMart that invades my privacy, it is the
result of =other= people shopping there that does.

This makes no sense at all. How so?


What invades my privacy (or will in the future) is the proliferation of

OK, now we've moved to will in the future. Change that to "may" in the
future and you will have come back to reality.

Matt

OK, now we've moved to will in the future. Change that to "may" in the future and you will have come back to reality.

If you don't defend yourself against the future now, you won't be able
to when it comes. And as for it being in the future, other similar
forms of privacy invasion are very much in the present, and this is just
another flavor of the same thing. So it =is= in the present.

In any case, this is one way a large enough entity can dictate terms to
non-participants. It is an undesirable consequence of "unrestrained
capitalism".

The essence of capitalism is competition. The goal of capitalists is to
eliminate the competition. So, if captialism is successful, it eats
itself. Insurance works the same way.

Jose
--
The monkey turns the crank and thinks he's making the music.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.