BUYING TROUBLE
Erik Baard, Village Voice, 7/24/02
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0230/baard.php
They thought they were making routine purchasesthe innocent, everyday
pickups of charcoal and hummus, bleach and sandwich bags, that keep the
modern household running. Regulars at a national grocery chain, these
thousands and thousands of shoppers used the store's preferred-customer
cards, in the process putting years of their lives on file. Perhaps they
expected their records would be used by marketers trying to better target
consumers. Instead, says the company's privacy consultant, the data was
used by government agents hunting for potential terrorists.
The saga began with a misguided fit of patriotism mere weeks after the
World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, when a corporate employee handed
over the recordsalmost literally, the grocery liststo federal investigators
from three agencies that had never even requested them. In a flash, the
most quotidian of exchanges became fodder for the Patriot Act…
As John Ashcroft's Citizens Corps spy program prepares for its debut next
month, it seems scores of American companies have already become willing
snitches. A few months ago, the Privacy Council surveyed executives from 22
companies in the travel industrynot just airlines but hotels, car rental
services, and travel agenciesand found that 64 percent of respondents had
turned over information to investigators and 59 percent had lowered their
resistance to such demands.
But there's a truly slippery slope here. We live in a nation that for
months has held at least 700 peopleand possibly hundreds moreincommunicado,
with no more solid connection to terrorism than that they were born in
Middle Eastern countries.
Privacy may seem like a luxury in a nation at war, but that moral concept
lies at the heart of constitutionally guaranteed liberties...
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