ObamaDataCare: Or, how can you be screwing yourself!

Keeping with the theme about how much data we willingly give away to corporations, let’s connect more dots and see what kind of picture this could potentially paint. I’m going to stick with the grocery store theme, as this will be the crux of my argument.

If you have read my other article, then you know that if you have a customer rewards card, then the store already has a database full of information about you, which updates every time you visit their store. Not only does it keep track of frequency of visits, average amount spent per trip, but also much, much more. For instance, they track the type of cola you purchase, the type of meat you prefer, if you drink alcohol and the amount you drink, if you smoke and how many packs you smoke, and with a little smart programming, they can even map out your personal life, i.e. if you have kids, if you’re single, if you have a dog or cat, pretty much they can make an ‘educated guess’ at what kind of life you lead, based off your purchases.

At this point and time these stores are collecting this data to ‘customize’ your shopping experience, which sounds like a noble goal for a company that is based on retaining you as a customer. But, is it possible that the data the store has compiled could actually be used against you in the near future?

Alright, everyone don your tinfoil hats… Ready?

Now let’s take this to next level. While reading this, please keep in mind that the NSA along with some of the most prominent cellular and internet service providers are already doing something similar to this. No telling how they are doing this legally, it could be a broad interpretation of Title II of the USA Patriot Act (the story being pushed thus far), could be a FISA court ruling, could be just a convenient relationship, or it could be it’s just more economical for these companies to just let the NSA have all this data versus having a legal team to defend every court ruling requesting data. Whatever the case, it’s happening now and, if history has any lesson for us, it will most likely continue until a whole lot of us make a big stink about it.

Now, take that model and switch the ‘players’ around, substitute the Obamacare apparatus for the NSA and the food stores for the cell/internet service providers. If you haven’t already made the connection of how this would work, let’s delve into it a little more.

We already know that your local food store (if you have one of their cards) knows what you’re eating, what you’re drinking, if you’re smoking and much more, so what if the Obamacare apparatus gets some kind of secret court ruling, or, for that matter, a regulatory ruling that they can mine this data to help Obamacare provide you the best healthcare ‘experience’. There are already tens of thousands of medical codes for every aliment under the sun, if you couple that with a citizen’s personal habits, then you’d have a good start at attempting to make people as healthy as they should be.

Just think, if this ‘new’ healthcare system discovered that you were eating a pound of bacon per week and that you have high cholesterol, they could ‘advise’ you, or maybe put you on a ‘program’ to help you start making better decisions in your eating habits. Same thing for smoking, drinking, whatever the system deems might be beneficial to your health.

OK, tinfoil hats off.

I’m not exactly sure what the founding fathers meant when they penned the line ‘promote the general welfare’, but I’m pretty sure this was not what they had in mind!  I believe that a lot of politicians have purposefully tried to substitute, through their rhetoric and the press, the word ‘provide’ in lieu of ‘promote’ which has major implications considering you only changed three letters!

Now of course this seems farfetched, but if you look back in time a little, you’ll find that some of the programs that are ongoing today would have been considered impossible and more especially, improbable years ago. One thing to always keep in mind, especially with progressivism and socialism, is that the people that adhere to these tenants tend to believe that the government is the best way to solve problems and some of these people will do anything to make sure that the greater good comes before the good of the individual.

As always, it will be up to us, We the People to make sure that programs like this never come to fruition. One of the ways we can do this is to start being responsible for our own personal data, which means only sharing this when we absolutely have to. It will make shopping and other online activities slightly more inconvenient, but think about the potential price that all this free data could ultimately cost us.

And here is a more in depth story concerning your (our) security:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/29/tomorrows-surveillance/

 

Data Mining: The new gold rush or old hat?

Since the recent revelations by the former, now infamous, NSA subcontractor Snowden regarding how the NSA collects and processes data about American citizens, we seem to have a new respect for data mining. While shocking, this should not come as a surprise to any of us, as we have become willing participants in this process for years.

You might be asking yourself, ‘what in the hell is he talking about’ and, if you’re not in the business of data processing, you might not know just exactly how much you have been compromising your own personal data, possibly for years. Just think about it, look through your wallet, pocketbook or key chain and see how many ‘customer rewards’ cards you have, MVP, VIP, PREFERRED, the names sound important, and they are for the companies that issue them. But for every one of those cards you possess, you have willingly given those companies much more data that the NSA has access to without getting a warrant.

“What?” you say.

A valid question, but if you read the Terms of Service agreements that you sign to get these ‘benefits’, then you will know that they can use your personal data however they see fit, in some cases even selling it to other corporations. So we are in an uproar about the NSA collecting a miniscule amount of data without our permission and claim our civil liberties are being violated, all the while we freely give away very specific personal data because we think we are getting some kind of reward in this exchange. Irony at its best!

The corporations, in which you willingly give your personal data, use this data every day to help ‘personalize’ your experience with their company. And while that is true in a small respect, what they are really doing is tracking your purchase trends and designing complex ad campaigns specifically designed for you. Don’t believe me? Well you can try this for yourself.

I just happen to shop at Food Lion a lot (it’s close to me, so I’m not picking on them, because all chain stores do this) and when I check out and use my MVP card (or, if I forget my card, I can just use my phone number!) and most of the time I will get a handful of coupons. Now these aren’t just random coupons, these are designed specifically for me based off my past purchases. You might say this is a good thing, but it’s a little slyer than that because I don’t get coupons for the actual things I buy (brand specific), instead I get coupons for similar products, most of the time from another brand. See how that works? Targeted advertising from the personal information that I willingly traded for this ‘benefit’. Food Lion has even went a step further in this process, by ‘allowing’ you to scan your card upon entry to the store, then spitting out the same kinds of coupons I mentioned, thereby influencing you purchasing decisions before you even start shopping!

And this is just one small example, from a relatively small company. Now imagine this same scenario going on with all of your online shopping accounts, not to mention free email accounts (i.e. Goggle’s Gmail) and all of the social media sites that harvest our data on a scale that would probably frighten you just as much as the NSA.

This scenario is the dichotomy of the uninformed ‘consumer’ (a term which I have despised since I was a small boy because it alludes to the fact that all I do is consume and not produce) and uninformed citizen. So before you get all bent out of shape about what the government is doing to collect your data, you should first look inwardly and ask yourself what kind of information you are giving away without a second thought for a little savings, convenience and/or social interaction.

I am not saying that we should not scrutinize what and how our government is collecting data on us, the citizenry, I am just pointing out the fact that we give away a lot more of our personal information if we believe we’re going to get something out of the deal. It’s a classic instance of greed versus civil responsibility; in other words, don’t play on both sides of the fence if you don’t want to get caught in the middle.

Want to know more about how the NSA analyzes the data it collects?

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/17/evil_in_a_haystack_nsa_metadata

And there is this...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/technology/silicon-valley-and-spy-agency-bound-by-strengthening-web.html?pagewanted=all&_r=3&