a bit more Re: NP corp. use of customer info

[Doug Millison]

Of course, as Paul says, "the subtext of the [Toysmart.com] story is 
that there is a legit use of this personal information in the overall 
process of unloading as much merchandise on the naive customer as 
possible. It's only the crazies' getting hold of it that the concern."

According to the corporations, that is. Corporate interests have 
every reason to want to divert attention away from their ongoing 
collection of information and compiling it into detailed profiles of 
individuals, so they focus on the criminal/hacker/stalker/pederast 
fears that have been fanned in the press, and trumpet the "legit use 
of this personal information." The politicians that corporations 
control can be expected to go along with the current spin. Moreover, 
since so much of the press is controlled by the companies that have 
traditionally led the way in gathering information about customers 
and selling it to others (in the form of magazine subscriber lists, 
the mother of all direct marketing tools  -- the current state of the 
art goes far beyond these humble beginnings, however), it's hardly 
surprising that media companies haven't exactly been in the vanguard 
of discussing such data collection for commercial purposes.

What the corporation calls "legit use" may easily be considered, by 
the individuals whose information is being surreptitiously collected 
and compiled, as an invasion of privacy that leads to intrusive 
marketing practices; although it's true that some consumers love it 
-- a measure of the degree to which corporations have been able to 
bend people to their will, I'd argue.  Privacy advocates, such as 
Simson Garfinkel author of _Database Nation_, do see potential danger 
in inappropriate use by unauthorized parties.  Once corporations 
collect, compile, and centralize such information, it's available for 
anybody to use, anybody who can pay for it or otherwise get at it, 
that is -- all the more reason to watch, and control, what 
corporations do, especially as governments continue to "privatize" 
and spin-off publicly owned assets (including information about 
individuals with respect to a broad spectrum of their activities and 
interests) to corporations.


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