I find it absolutely incredible that people today are so careless with their privacy that they jump at every opportunity to exchange personal information and that of their family’s, to grocery store chains, wholesalers and membership clubs, for discounts on trinkets and junk food, like winos giving blood for whiskey money.
You’d think after all of the stalking, assassinations, fraud, blackmail and computer hacking that cap the headlines every week, not to mention the laughable lengths to which celebrities go for a little privacy, the buffalo squeezers of our enlightened age would get a clue.
Giving out personal data to buy-low buccaneers and double-talking databasers is no less reckless than Clinton trading nuclear secrets to China for campaign cash. We may as well wear a big fat tee shirt to Uncle Daddy’s Redneck Roundup with AIM HERE STUPID! written across the front in glow paint.
Would you paste your financial statement, credit file, medical records, tax return and your daily schedule up on a flashy billboard downtown along with some 8 x 10 glossys of you and your family and a map to your lovely home? What if I offered you a couple hundred bucks and some frequent flyer miles….Hmmm?
Do you honestly think that when all of the employees of corporate America enter and exchange that data with each other, it¹s going to stay locked away in some secret underground vault, never to be accessed or anal-yzed again? Right…they only want your name, date of birth, sex and social security number to make sure you get those Twinkie and Hi-C coupons. What’s more….once the genie’s out of the ‘no return’ bottle, there ain’t no refunds!
I am repeatedly reminded of how difficult it is to become UN-known in this technological wonderland of ours every time I go to my mailbox and find ten to fifteen department store catalogs with my name and address on them. I have to literally sift though all the junk mail just to find my bills ! Mind you, this is months AFTER calling the 800 numbers on the back of each and every one of them for almost a year, demanding to be taken off of their mailing lists. I did the same with all of my credit card companies AND the junk mail clearinghouses as well. Then I find out that banks have been quietly providing their customer’s personal data to the government and retailers for years !
Forget internet privacy. Anything anybody offers you for free online, (internet service, web email, software, etc.), is really not free at all. It may not cost you a dime right then, but you will pay dearly for it later with your privacy.
Am I the only one who raises veins when a green-haired juvenile with glowing eyes and a tongue ring demands my full name, address and telephone number before he¹ll let be buy me a tube of Preparation H with a twenty dollar bill?
The clerks aren’t to blame. Neither are the stores, for that matter. WE ARE !…..for continuing to do business with them, as if we¹re required by law to surrender our skivvies for the sacred system.
Anyone who doesn’t recognize the inherent danger of this activity just needs to ask a republican in congress about those nine hundred stolen FBI files or speak briefly with any witness still living, who has tried to testify against our Commando and Chief.
You may not know much about Big Brother, but he’s getting to know you databased discounters intimately. By the way….can I interest you in a biometric implant? They¹re so much handier than lugging around those dumb old discount cards…and quite painless ya’ know….once injected under the skin.
Now, repeat after me: “There’s no such thing as ECHELON”….”There’s no such thing as ECHELON”…. “There’s no such thing as ECHELON”…….