Privacy
Getting to know all about you
Getting to know all about you: By Jennifer Vogel. Attention, shoppers -- what you tell supermarket clubs may be used against you.
When Robert Rivera signed up for a Vons grocery store card, he had no idea that detailed records of his shopping habits would one day be used against him. But that’s exactly what he says happened.
Rivera was shopping at a Los Angeles Vons store two years ago when he slipped on a slick of spilled yogurt, causing him to fall and shatter his kneecap. Unable to drive, let alone work, he sued the store for damages. During the negotiations, says 59-year-old Rivera, a mediator played hardball in encouraging him to settle. “He came in and said, ‘They want to settle because they have information that you buy a lot of liquor,’” he recalls. As Rivera tells it, the mediator indicated that the store had accessed his shopping records and would use them against him in court.
Rivera didn’t settle the case, which is due for trial on Oct. 19 — instead, he went to the local media. And Vons, which now says it never peeked at the records or intended to use them in court, backed down from its threat.
Grocery store “club cards” have become commonplace in supermarkets across the country — by last count, nearly a quarter had implemented such programs, with 40 percent planning to follow suit in the near future. In the stores that offer them, using a card is usually the only way to earn discounts on groceries — even items that used to be automatically marked down without coupons.
Signing up is a tempting proposition, especially for those on a tight budget. Literature for Safeway, which has been offering club cards for over a year, makes coupon cutting out to be heavy labor and guarantees “instant” and substantial savings, all with the convenience of a little plastic card swiped at the point of purchase. Why, you may even save on items you didn’t realize were on sale! “It’s never been this easy,” promises Safeway.
The problem is, in order to get those easy savings, customers have to turn over a whole host of personal information. Safeway requests a full name, home address, birth date and home phone number (used to access the account should you leave your card at home). In tiny little print, the application explains why: All purchases — of toilet paper, bacon, medication, video rentals, magazines and anything else that passes through the scanner — will be automatically recorded in a database and associated with each shopper’s name and address.
Safeway and other stores intend to use this information to track regional buying habits and to build customer profiles, so they can replace scattershot newspaper coupons with tailored mailings sent directly to card members. “Say, Mrs. Johnson, we’ve noticed that you’ve been buying baby food lately. You must have a baby in the house. Here are some other baby-related savings you might enjoy.” Or the more menacing, “So, you’ve been buying large amounts of painkillers, Mr. Jones. Would you like to try another, extra-strength brand?”
Supermarkets need programs like these, claim marketing gurus, to compete with cheaper warehouse retailers like the Wal-Mart-owned Sam’s Club. “The supermarket industry is amazingly competitive,” says Carole Throssell, director of media relations for the Food Marketing Institute. “Anything the store can do to attract and keep customers, the store is going to consider.”
Some companies are marrying the cards with other functions, like check cashing, intertwining bank and purchasing information. Other programs link whole groups of retailers — a bank in Cincinnati recently started a card program where purchases at a host of local stores are recorded into a central database. Customers who use the card receive discounts and earn points that can be spent at participating retailers.
If it doesn’t bother you that businesses should have such comprehensive and personal records of your habits and preferences, consider that Maryland-based Giant Food Inc. was caught earlier this year providing its customers’ prescription purchasing information — medical records — to marketers. The grocery store stopped releasing the records after the public found out about it and complained mightily. But companies sell or give away information on customers all the time (how do you think you get all that junk mail?) and grocery store records could, and undoubtedly will, be used in any number of ways.
Beth Givens, director of the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, imagines these potential worst-case scenarios: “Insurance companies use them to look for people who smoke, drink alcohol, take over-the-counter medications that indicate serious health problems or eat unhealthy foods. Employers could use them to look for people with unhealthy lifestyles.” They could also be subpoenaed by police or attorneys trying to build cases, as exemplified by Kenneth Starr’s subpoena of bookstore records in the Monica Lewinsky investigation. (A judge ordered the records turned over, but Lewinsky released them herself before the store had to comply.)
Most supermarkets, including Safeway and Vons, insist that they’re sensitive to privacy issues and won’t sell or release personally identifying information to other companies. But, as Givens notes, “There is no law that prevents this sort of stuff from happening.” And there’s no law to stop stores from using the information for their own benefit in lawsuits, as allegedly happened in Rivera’s case.
It seems the only way to get supermarket discounts these days without becoming part of a tell-all database is to put a fake name and phone number on the club card application, or fill it out anonymously. “We’ve had customers request the ability to change their name to ‘Safeway Customer,’” admits Debra Lambert, Safeway’s corporate director of public affairs. “We do allow that.”
Or, you can check in at the “No Cards” Web site for tips on letter-writing campaigns and card program sabotage (one letter writer suggests filling out a new card every time you go through the checkout line, costing the store extra bucks in plastic and data-management fees). The site, started by Zelda Gordon and Dale Berlin, two shoppers in New Mexico, has a motto: “A FREE PEOPLE DOES NOT SHOW IDENTITY PAPERS TO BUY BREAD.” It was started after Gordon wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper, complaining about the two-tier shopping system card programs create. “We sort of call it a consumer movement,” she says. “This is a way of bribing us to surrender demographic information, which is obviously very valuable at this point.”
Too bad for Robert Rivera that he didn’t stumble upon the No Cards site before cheerfully filling out his Vons card application. Rivera, who hasn’t been able to return to his job as a motion picture security guard since the accident, is currently supported by his son. He mainly stays home in his East Los Angeles neighborhood, nursing his knee and wondering how he’ll purchase decent Christmas presents for his wife.
“My wife and I used to take vacations,” he says. “We used to have money and I had a good job. But now I’m sitting here building a slingshot to scare away some cats. I’d just say, be careful what you sign because they will know you from head to toe. And they could use it against you.”
Jennifer Vogel is a freelance writer in Seattle and editor of Working Stiff. More Jennifer Vogel.
Who owns your tweets?
A judge's decision to uphold a subpoena for an Occupy arrestee's Twitter account raises serious privacy issues
Malcolm Harris (inset) and Occupy Wall Street protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge. (Credit: Sam Margevicius/AP/Daryl Lang) I tweet a lot. Sometimes I feel like I tweet more often than I have face-to-face conversations — and therein lie multiple issues that will not be addressed here (but perhaps one day, in therapy). However, in the course of constructing these 140-character-or-less nuggets of opinion, information or political agitation, never did I give much thought to whether these tweets were mine. It turns out they’re not, in the eyes of the law. For all the clamor about Twitter’s revolutionary potential in the Middle East, we have a reminder right here in New York of its revolutionary limitations.
Continue Reading CloseNatasha Lennard covers the Occupy movement for Salon. A British-born, Brooklyn-based journalist, she has been covering Occupy Wall Street since before the first sleeping bag was unrolled in Zuccotti Park. One of the first journalists arrested at an Occupy action, she has managed to enrage Andrew Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. You can follow her on Twitter (@natashalennard), and email her any Occupy updates/videos/ideas to natasha.lennard@gmail.com More Natasha Lennard.
The drones are coming — to America
Congress has opened up U.S. airspace to the drone industry -- and your privacy is about to be at risk
(Credit: Salon) A drone is probably heading toward your personal airspace soon. With Congress requiring the Federal Aviation Administration to simplify and expedite drone applications from U.S. police departments by May 15, industry and watchdog groups agree: It won’t be long before cops and first responders put them into action.
Thanks to a law passed without much public debate in March, the FAA must allow law enforcement agencies to operate small drones (i.e., less than 4.4 pounds) at altitudes of less than 400 feet. “The demand is huge,” says Catherine Crump, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. Michael Toscano, president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a trade group, says there are nearly 19,000 law enforcement entities in the United States, of which only 300 now have aerial surveillance capacities.
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Jefferson Morley is a staff writer for Salon in Washington and author of the forthcoming book, Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 (Nan Talese/Doubleday). More Jefferson Morley.
The spread of “Suspicious Activity Reporting”
Suspicious Activity Reporting asks citizens to keep an eye out on their neighbors -- and it's spreading
(Credit: Warren Goldswain via Shutterstock/Salon) Crime in Los Angeles is a gritty enterprise, and donning an LAPD badge has historically involved getting your hands dirty. Long before the New York Police Department was spying on Muslim students, the LAPD was running a large-scale domestic spy operation in the 1970s and ’80s, snooping on and infiltrating more than 200 political, labor and civic organizations including the office of then Mayor Tom Bradley. Today, the LAPD isn’t quite so aggressive, but it still employs a directive titled Special Order 1, which permits police officers to deem what is “suspicious” and then act on it.
Continue Reading CloseUzma Kolsy is an activist and freelance writer based in Southern California. She is the former Managing Editor of InFocus News, the largest newspaper in California serving the Muslim American community. More Uzma Kolsy.
The rise of Facebook Nation
The social network has become as big and powerful as a country -- and it's time its citizens got a constitution
(Credit: ponsulak kunsub via Shutterstock/Salon) When David Cameron became Britain’s prime minister, he made an appointment to talk to another head of state — Mark Zuckerberg. Yes, that Mark Zuckerberg: the billionaire wunderkind, the founder of Facebook. At the meeting at 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister Cameron and Facebook president Zuckerberg discussed ways in which social networks could take over certain governmental duties and inform public policymaking.
A month later, Zuckerberg and Cameron had a follow-up conversation, later posted on YouTube. Cameron, dressed in suit and tie, chatted with Zuckerberg, who wore a blue cotton T-shirt. “Basically, we’ve got a big problem here,” Cameron pointed out to Zuckerberg, describing the U.K.’s financial woes.
Continue Reading CloseLori B. Andrews is a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and the director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology. She is the author of 14 books, including "The Clone Age: Adventures in the New World of Reproductive Technology." More Lori B. Andrews.
NYPD eyed U.S. citizens in intel effort
Police reportedly monitored Americans under no suspicion of wrongdoing, simply because of their ethnicity
A uniform from the NYPD is displayed during a special service to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, at a church in New Plymouth, New Zealand, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011. The US team will play Ireland in their opening Rugby World Cup game later today. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)(Credit: AP) The New York Police Department put American citizens under surveillance and scrutinized where they ate, prayed and worked, not because of charges of wrongdoing but because of their ethnicity, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The documents describe in extraordinary detail a secret program intended to catalog life inside Muslim neighborhoods as people immigrated, got jobs, became citizens and started businesses. The documents undercut the NYPD’s claim that its officers only follow leads when investigating terrorism.
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