Pizza & the Total Surveillance Society.

[G_j]

What does ordering pizza have to do with your privacy?

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/ (flash video)

The government and corporations are aggressively collecting information about your personal life and your habits. They want to track your purchases, your medical records, and even your relationships. The Bush Administration's policies, coupled with invasive new technologies, could eliminate your right to privacy completely. Please help us protect our privacy rights and prevent the Total Surveillance Society.

[JHB]

1. Not to trivialize the matter...

...but the title does make me flash on a scenario where Agent Mike finds out what you like to order, and arranges for illegal 'shrooms to be sent on your pie, as pretext for an arrest.

[CrispyQ]

2. And don't forget those supermarket "club member" cards . . .

...where you have to scan your card to get the sale price on the item. WTF??? Shopping at your store isn't good enough, I have to have a club card to get the sale price? I've moved most of my grocery shopping to Wild Oats, who gives the sale price to EVERYONE, not just club card holders.

I hate Safeway & King Soopers for this.

[hermetic]

3. There was a grocery store

in MN, gone now, that used those cards and they admitted that they turned all their shopping records over to the FBI or SS just after 9/11.

[Sabriel]

8. Hmm, I bought hummus and pita bread the other day.

Maybe I should rethink my purchases and start buying hot dogs and those little flag cookies.

Does this thread make anyone else want to become a Luddite (at least a Luddite who still gets satellite and high-speed Internet access...)?

Sabriel

[tsm11]

4. PNR

You must be coloradan :)

I have safeway and kingsooper cards... filled out with bogus information.

[Blecht]

5. LOL

I moved away from Colorado years ago, and I still use my Safeway card I got there, filled with bogus information, here in Oregon.

[Gin]

6. I have a food lion card..use it a lot...it saves money....they can have

that info...it's boring as hell...and my prints are on file already since I was civil service...so...screw agent Mike and the whole damn bunch...if toilet paper, cereal, eggs and butter are criminal...well...I confess.

[G_j]

9. better not buy any middle eastern food though :-) n/t

[MadHound]

7. Old news, but still unheard by the vast majority in this country

And still worthwhile to scream from every rooftop. The war on drugs played a large role in expanding the surveilance society, and the war on terror blew the doors right off. A good book to read on this is Jim Redden's "Snitch Culture", a scary look at how bad the surveilance society has become, and it was written pre-911. <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0922915636/102-6693106-8727354>