How is this not illegal?

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A group of passengers was treated like livestock by being trapped on a grounded American Airlines plane for 9 hours. I can't imagine what I would have done after even an hour like that.

I don't know why this kind of thing is allowed, but it's customer abuse, plain and simple.

You wouldn't have lost it if you didn't take it in the first place.

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In a not so surprising story, some large chain stores have been hacked and had their databases of customer information stolen creating a risk for their customers.

The end result is that consumers are often left completely in the dark when data breaches occur, wondering if they dodged a bullet, or if the inconvenience and frustration of fraud is simply waiting to hit them at a later date.

I hate these stories. If they didn't store so much data in the first place, this wouldn't even be a problem.

Data collection is everywhere; including the pizza store

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In the Washington Post was a nice article explaining how even a normal average citizen can be tracked during her whole day through technology that exists right now. From the article:

Domino's tracks her name, phone number, address, and size and type of pizza ordered. Unless a store decides otherwise, the data are held forever. That way, Domino's can provide more personalized service -- "Hi, Ms. Bernard, would you like your regular -- mushroom and sausage?"

She didn't ask them to store it, and they didn't ask her permission, they just took it. No company should be allowed to do this unchecked.

Bernard's credit card companies know her income and her shopping habits. They can share her information with affiliates without her permission and need not stop even if she asks them to.

Cheery.

Best Buy wants to know if you're a good person or a bad... for profits anyway.

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Sixwise gives and in-depth review of Best Buy's plan to "actively…eliminate " what they call "devil" customers. I've written about this before, but I like how they list specific actions that could land you on the "blacklist".

Most notably, this is the advent of "customer reports" similar to credit reports where you will be assigned a number based on profitability and treated accordingly. If you don't want to see that happen, make sure you let your legislation know.

From the Ars Technica article:

Under the new law, anyone attempting to "knowingly and intentionally" acquire the phone records of a third party by making false representations to a phone company or selling such illegally obtained records will face up to ten years in prison and fines.

Is it just me or does this seem really wrong? Why did we have to make a law about this? Wasn't it obviously a bad thing already?

Lab-grown meat is coming.

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Sixwise reports on the FDA approval of cloned meat and milk. Most notably, there will be no notification required. Quoted from the article:

"When they deny us mandatory labels, they don't just deny us the right to choose", said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety (CFS). "They also deny our health professionals the ability to trace potential toxic or allergic reactions to this food. It's bad enough they're making us guinea pigs. But when we have health effects, we won't be able to trace it."

I think the idea of lab-grown meat has a lot of potential, but there's no justification for trying to spring this on people in secret.

Sony literally hacked US citizens and got a slap on the wrist.

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Consumer Affairs reports a settlement with 39 states for Sony's use of a "rootkit" to try and prevent users from copying their music. This forced DRM was detected by computer experts and quickly raised a stir.

Most importantly,

Sony said it was "pleased" with the settlement and said it would stop using copy-protection software that cannot be easily removed from consumers' PCs

Hey there fellow kids. Who wants a PSP fur Realz?

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In an amusing example of fake marketing, Sony created a fake website called "alliwantforchristmasisapsp" where two employees of their marketing firm pretended to be young, hip gamers who blogged about wanting a PSP.

According to the 1-up article on the debacle:

The tide began to turn against Sony's initiative after popular webcomic Penny-Arcade publicly outed the chicanery in a deliberate move to force a little transparency up ins. The Internet was quick to kick the

Marketing hiding as natural recommendations. Lovely.

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The Washington Post reports that the FTC has begun to crack down on false word-of-mouth advertising. This is where a company pays people to tell friends about their products. From the article:

As the practice has taken hold over the past several years, however, some advocacy groups have questioned whether marketers are using such tactics to dupe consumers into believing they are getting unbiased information.

Ya' think?

Marketing to kids on a school bus is about as Orwelian as it gets.

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Obligation Inc. is documenting the exploits of BusRadio, a company that is producing programming intended for play on school busses. From the Obligation.org page on the issue:

These men realize that once on a school bus, children are a captive audience. Any captive audience can be exploited by forcing them to hear advertising. So Steven Shulman and Michael Yanoff developed BusRadio and were greatly aided by the venture capital moneyman Robert Davoli of Sigma Partners. As far as I can tell, this is the first time Sigma has chosen to financially back a very controversial company.