Government, Business, Technology and Privacy

Curmudgeon did two posts, last Friday and Saturday, about the now dead-in-the-water Vehicle Miles Traveled tax (VMT). I left a comment on his Friday post bemoaning my growing tendency to trade my privacy for convenience. Curmudgeon responded to my comment with a post on Monday, leading to this post.

Curmudgeon distinguishes between private and governmental intrusions. I don't.

While it isn't universally true, I assume that when I allow someone else to know something about me, that it may well become public knowledge (Fourth Amendment garbage cans - Google it for the reference).

Curmudgeon's Jewel card (my Kroger card) to me is no different than getting a transponder for my car so that I can use the "Cruise Lane" on the toll road here in Atlanta (I don't have one). For security, convenience and savings, I am telling companies and governments about my lifestyle.

The VMT system is a beefed-up Marta Cruise Card or a monthly CTA transit pass. If you take the train to work, you have a train pass don't you? Each of these programs track where you go, when you go, when you leave and where you go from there.

I moved last September and paid the movers with a credit card. The next day, I got an Email and a voicemail from the bank's fraud department. (The mover had inputted the security number incorrectly.) When I called, the lady asked more than the usual what's your card number and your mother's maiden name questions since there was an issue of fraud. "Tell me the name of a street that you lived on in Miami?" I moved from Miami to Atlanta in 1987; but, there was my history sitting on her monitor.

When I applied to be admitted to the Georgia Bar back then, my application with attachments was over fifty pages, giving a complete history of my life to that point.

On Monday and Tuesday I showed my boarding pass (having inserted my credit card into a machine to get it) and driver's license to four TSA people. I was "puffed" in a three sided glass enclosure to see if I had traces of explosives clinging to me. A TSA person swabbed my laptop.

Jewel, Kroger, T-Mobile, Visa, our banks, our ISP's, Marta, CTA, airlines, states and the Feds know way too much about us; and, we have wittingly and unwittingly given them the information.

The horse is out of the barn, the train has left the station and the GPS signal has left our cell phones with respect to intrusions on our privacy by business and government.

That government has police power does not distinguish it. Business has monolithic economic power. Try crossing out language in the paperwork when you do your next refinance (the President is confident than money will be loaned again sometime this decade).

My big finish? There is none. The best that can be done to reign in the effects of technology on privacy, whether it is used by government or private concerns is to weigh each invasion. Is it necessary, desirable, beneficial? Is too much disclosed in return? Businesses invade privacy when they see it as beneficial to them and when people see equal benefit to them. A trade is made. Government survives by the consent of the governed. It acts in a bit different marketplace, but in a marketplace none-the-less. The VMT was floated, roundly derided and was put back on the shelf, as it should be. There will be a next time. Be ready.