I'm sure most of us have heard of the fascinating new industry that's sprung up like a weed as an offshoot of our advances in technology: Data mining. In a nutshell, it involves the collection and dissemination of information about individuals for any use that anybody can think of.
From governments conducting censuses to businesses trying to develop profiles of the people most likely to buy their product, raw information about you concerning everything from your preference in toilet paper to how many sheets you use when you wipe is all grist for their mills. If you use three sheets now, Procter and Gamble wants to know if you'd be more willing to buy a product if you could do the same job with only two sheets, or would you be willing to use four if it were softer?
While most of us don't even think like that, it's these types of questions that plague the minds of the product development folk at big corporations and their marketing departments. Anything and everything they can find out about you will help them build a better picture of how they can get you to buy their products.
Information has become the hottest commodity on the market these days and it's not just being put to so-called innocent use by the corporations and advertising firms. Everybody, from private insurance companies to mortgage brokers to credit agencies, has ways they can make use of that data.
Do you order a large amount of pizza on your credit card or buy a lot of groceries with a high fat content? Don't be surprised if, the next time your health insurance premiums come up for renewal, they either increase your premium or you are turned down because you represent too great a risk because of possible cardiac problems.
You may think I'm exaggerating, and I wish I were, but according to this article in the Globe and Mail newspaper, it's already happening in the United States. A chain of grocery stores in New England has developed software that generates a dietary profile of each of its shoppers based on their grocery purchases.
In order to help cover the costs of developing the programme, they have sold these profiles to organizations wanting to know which of their clients has brought their ill health on themselves through bad diet so they can cut them off from coverage.
The villain behind all this is something that's actually been around for quite a while but is only just being utilized to maximum effect. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is small, silent, and can be utilized everywhere. Procter and Gamble want to install a chip in your fridge so they can monitor what foods you buy.
Article comments
1 - Byron
Get rid of RFID privacy concerns by letting the card holder decide when it transmits.
Some people are concerned that RFID tags embedded in credit cards make the presence of such cards detectable by anyone with an RFID reader.
There is an easy way to make RFID tagged cards normally invisible, but active when you want them to be.
"RFID Shield" lets you choose when your tags are readable.
Information about the RFID Shield is at:
http://smarttools.home.att.net/rfshield.htm
2 - Jon Sobel
So, I guess my strategy of NOT signing up for my supermarket's "club" won't maintain my nutritional privacy for much longer. This is getting scary. I'm not so sure I agree with Al Gore anymore - maybe we should *hasten* global warming so it can melt down this whole society and we can start fresh.
3 - Victor Plenty
No discussion of modern privacy is complete unless it takes into account the arguments put forward by David Brin in The Transparent Society.
RFID is a relatively crude and easily defeated tracking technology, compared to the things that are likely to become possible in coming decades. Passing laws against these technologies will not prevent any corporation or government agency from invading your privacy. Even a determined individual with only moderate wealth can learn pretty much anything they might want to know about your life.
To secure the blessings of liberty, we need to recognize that the privacy we treasure is largely illusionary, even today with comparatively primitive surveillance technologies. If we take that fact into account whenever we seek to instruct our governments on how to handle new technologies, we might stand a chance to preserve meaningful freedoms. If we let ourselves believe in an illusionary ideal of privacy, we may inadvertently make it impossible to restrain the powerful who want to hide their misdeeds from public scrutiny.
4 - Brady
Does anybody read the Bible anymore. Reading this story, does 666 ring a bell in anyone's mind. We are systematically being programmed for a one world government, one world currency, and having to have one of these chips to purchase anything. Bible prophecy is coming true in an alarming pace. Wake up people and decide which side you are on. God's or the Anit-Christ!!!! Make the right choice, it will be for eternity.