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.

Maybe, just maybe, people should be free from surveillance if they're not doing anything wrong?

Read about it here.

The question is, what will happen now that it's being monitored by the court that should have been monitoring it in the first place? Why is Bush allowing this? It can only be because he thinks they won't do anything about it.

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.

If you're not doing anything wrong, the government should leave you alone!

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Here's a snippet from Ars Technica about how it's not just the FBI abusing power these days. From the article:

Wired's Ryan Singel adds a bit more to the story with the tidbit that the Pentagon plans to hang on to the records and feed them into TALON, the database project that the military uses for the data-mining part of its anti-terrorism efforts. Great! This is especially encouraging in light of the comments of Pentagon officials quoted by the Times who claim that these records are typically used to knock names off of the suspects list. In other words, they look at the records, determine that Mr. Smith is completely innocent, has no ties to terror, and got his money legitimately, then they promptly feed his data into an anti-terror database.

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?

Is there anything that doesn't have RFID anymore?

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EPIC reports that the Department of Homeland Security is creating a passport-like system that will be required for travelers between the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda. This "passport" will contain RFID and very little security. From the article:

The federal government has been increasingly using RFID technology in its identification documents. The Department of Homeland security last year began using RFID-enabled I-94 forms in its United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology ("US-VISIT ") program to track the entry and exit of visitors.¹⁹ This year, the State Department began issuing RFID-enabled passports to U.S. citizens.²⁰ Only 23% of U.S. citizens have passports.²¹ Therefore, under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, U.S. citizens would have to carry either a passport, which costs $97 for first-time applicants, or a PASS card. As the proposed Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative PASS card, U.S. passport, and US-VISIT I-94 entry and exit forms all contain RFID chips, if the PASS card proposal is adopted, then all U.S. citizens carrying either a passport or PASS card and visitors entering the country through US-VISIT will be able to be tracked using RFID technology.

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Schneier reports on a murder that was captured on a city camera system. He clearly thinks that such systems are pointless though the article seems to present it as being good (it caught a thief after all).

By using the worst possible scenario, however unlikely, it becomes easy to scare people into supporting something you personally want. When it comes to camera systems everywhere, remember this: absolute security can be acheived through absolute surveillance. This is true, but absolute surveillance also brings zero privacy and freedom.