Edie Freedman just sent me a link to a thought-provoking ACLU video from 2003 about the demise of privacy. While I’m not a fan of many ACLU positions, and the video may seem far-fetched to some, I’ve personally had a few brushes with credit card companies that make this video seem less over the top. One time, when I’d just spent a large amount on some antiquarian books, my credit card was declined at a second antiquarian bookstore down the street not fifteen minutes later. I called to say that yes, I was in Bath, England, while my wife was making other charges in California (assuming that that was the reason for the decline), and was floored to have the person on the other end of the line add, “and it seemed odd that someone would be spending so much money on used books.”
The “Take Action” link at the end of the video takes you to a page entitled Urge Congress to Defang the Matrix, so this video was obviously inspired by Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness program, which was nominally scrapped after public outcry, but I believe that the trend does continue. (O’Reilly published Simson Garfinkel’s book on the subject, Database Nation in 2000. While the book sold some 30,000 copies, it didn’t have the Silent Spring effect that we hoped for.)
P.S. I’m actually a big fan of data mining for business intelligence. I’m even a fan of systems that know a lot about their users. But we need to understand how to make these systems serve our human goals, and not become tools of oppression.