The Freedom Bulletin

After reading this article in the New York Times Magazine, I will never feel the same way about shopping at Target again.

“The desire to collect information on customers is not new for Target or any other large retailer, of course. For decades, Target has collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of its stores. Whenever possible, Target assigns each shopper a unique code — known internally as the Guest ID number — that keeps tabs on everything they buy. ‘If you use a credit card or a coupon, or fill out a survey, or mail in a refund, or call the customer help line, or open an e-mail we’ve sent you or visit our Web site, we’ll record it and link it to your Guest ID,’ Pole said. ‘We want to know everything we can.’

Also linked to your Guest ID is demographic information like your age, whether you are married and have kids, which part of town you live in, how long it takes you to drive to the store, your estimated salary, whether you’ve moved recently, what credit cards you carry in your wallet and what Web sites you visit. Target can buy data about your ethnicity, job history, the magazines you read, if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house, where you went to college, what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal or applesauce, your political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving and the number of cars you own.”

When Target faced some backlash about this invasion of privacy (for example, after it sent baby coupons to the home of a pregnant teen whose family didn’t know she was pregnant), they decided not to scale back their information-collecting but to hide it from customers:

“The question became: how could they get their advertisements into expectant mothers’ hands without making it appear they were spying on them? How do you take advantage of someone’s habits without letting them know you’re studying their lives?”

The answer that Target devised was to send people combinations of behaviorally-targeted coupons and coupons that they knew the customers would never use, so that it would look like a standard, non-targeted set of coupons. As a Targer executive explained, “We started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.”

Creepy, huh? What makes it creepier is that according to the article, all of this tracking is within the law.

This demonstrates to me, at least, that we need stronger laws against behavioral tracking, not only on the Internet but in physical stores like Target as well. Stores need to collect some information in order to function, for example, they need to run credit cards through a computer in order for people to pay, and cashiers need to see what a customer is purchasing inorder to ring up the transaction. It also makes sense for stores to track which items are the most popular, which items are returned the most often, in which seasons certain items are most frequently bought, and other general statistics. But in my opinion, unless customers consetnt, it is not okay for stores to create profiles of individuals, in other words to connect information about what a particular customer purchased from one visit to the next. If someone wants to consent to being tracked, perhaps in exchange for coupons or other discounts, fine. (Although there is a fine line between this and punishing people who do not want to be tracked by charging them higher prices, which is not fine.) But for businesses to track personal information about their customers without giving them any meaningful choice in the matter violates people’s rights to privacy and liberty.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice have been distributing flyers to various businesses warning them about things that they should consider “suspicious” and alert law enforcement about. You can view them all at Public Intelligence. Some examples of actions considered suspicious:

• “Using cash for large transactions or a credit card in someone else’s name”
• “Travels illogical distance” (to stores, Internet cafes, etc.)
• “New customer who is not from the area”
• “Reluctance to provide complete personal information” or “demands identity ‘privacy’”
• Purchasing unusual combinations of items
• Purchasing large quantities (or small quantities on multiple occasions) of items
• Storing items in unusual containers
• For beauty/drug suppliers: “Only chemicals and no other beauty supplies purchased,” or “asks about boiling or making liquid more concentrated.”
• For electronics stores: “Purchases quantities of prepaid or disposable cell phones,” or shows “unusual interest” in voice or data encryption, VOIP, voice privacy, means to shield IP address, or tracking of phone locations.
• For farm supply stores: “Possessing little knowledge of crops, soil composition, field size, application methods, or fertilizers” or “failing to state legitimate agricultural use for product.”
• For financial institutions: “A lack of evidence of legitimate business activity,” “unusual mixed deposits of money orders, third-party checks, and/or payroll checks into a business account,” “transactions being conducted in bursts of activities,” or “bulk cash and monetary instrument transactions.”
• For hobby shops: “Inquiring about remote controls and model aircraft payload capacity and maximum range,” “possessing little knowledge of the activity for which the purchase is intended,” or “demonstrating no interest or enthusiasm for the hobby or sport.”
• For home improvement stores: Purchasing “large quantity of watches, electronic timers, or kitchen timers,” “night-vision equipment and camouflage apparel,” or “pipe(s)…when vague about their use.”
• For hotels, “Requests specific room assignments or locations,” “refuse cleaning service over an extended time,” “use entrances and exits that avoid the lobby,” and “do not leave their room.”
• For Internet cafes: “Are overly concerned about privacy, attempts to shield the screen from view of others,” “always pay cash,” or “signs on to Comcast, AOL, etc.”
• For military surplus stores: “Make bulk purchases of items to include weatherproofed ammunition or match containers, Meals Ready to Eat, night vision devices, night flashlights, gas masks, high capacity magazines, bi-pods or tri-pods for rifles.”
• For rental properties: “Refuse maintenance or service over an extended time” or “receive an unusual amount of package deliveries.”
• For storage facilities: “Discarding clothing or shoes in new condition,” “entering or leaving storage facility at unusual times,” or “avoiding contact with rental facility personnel.”

Under this initiative, called Communities Against Terrorism, store owners are also encouraged to “require valid ID from all new customers” and “keep records of purchases.”

At least they remember to add, “Some of these activities, taken individually, could be innocent,” and “It is important to remember that just because someone’s speech, actions, beliefs, appearance, or way of life is different; it does not mean that he or she is suspicious.”

But still, people should not be as paranoid and nosy as these flyers encourage them to be. Terrorism does happen, but it is rare, and preventing it should not come at the cost of people’s anonymity and privacy. No one should have to present an ID to buy something in a store, and stores should not track what people purchase any more than is needed to keep track of their inventories or learn general sales trends. Stores, airports, banks, and the other establishments targeted by these flyers are public places, so no one can expect to have complete privacy there. But I would not want to live in a society where, whenever someone is out in public, their actions are scrutinized and monitored to make sure that they conform to what is considered “normal.” People already have too little privacy in what we do, what we say, where we go, and what we buy. We need to push back and demand a greater sphere of our lives within which we can act in anonymity and therefore true freedom.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Most of the world, I’m sure, has already heard of Senator Rand Paul’s act of courage yesterday, but I must pay tribute to him anyway. At a Nashville, TN, airport, Senator Paul, after already being forced to go through a full-body scanner, was ordered to submit to a pat-down. He refused and was subsequently escorted from the airport by police.

According to Yahoo News:

In a telephone interview with the Associated Press, Paul said that the incident occurred after an alarm went off when he passed through a scanner at Nashville Airport Monday. Paul said the alarm had apparently been triggered by his knee, though “the senator said he has no screws or medical hardware around the joint,” the AP said.

TSA agents refused his request to walk through the scanner again to reconcile the anomaly, and he refused their demand for a pat-down, Paul said.

The Kentucky Senator said that “he asked for another scan but refused to submit to a pat down by airport security,” the AP reported. Paul “said he was ‘detained’ at a small cubicle and couldn’t make his flight to Washington for a Senate vote scheduled later in the day.”

Some may argue that refusing a pat-down isn’t enough to make someone a hero. In my opinion, Rand definitely qualifies for that title because of everything he has done to defend liberty in his life so far. Although what he did yesterday was a small, everyday act, it is things like this that little by little advance the cause of freedom and make the world a better place.

In December, two elderly women, in separate incidents, accused the TSA of violating their rights with degrading, excessively intrusive airport security screenings. Now the federal agency is apologizing for what their agents did:

“In an about-face, the feds have admitted wrongdoing in the cases of two elderly women who say they were strip-searched at Kennedy Airport by overzealous screeners.

Federal officials had initially insisted that all ‘screening procedures were followed’ after Ruth Sherman, 89, and Lenore Zimmerman, 85, went public with separate accounts of humiliating strip searches.

But in a letter obtained by the Daily News, the Homeland Security Department acknowledges that screeners violated standard practice in their treatment of the ailing octogenarians last November.”

Read the rest at the New York Daily News.

Although it’s always good for the TSA to apologize for humiliating innocent travelers, they aren’t exactly doing so for the right reason. Both women accuse TSA agents of strip-searching them, but the TSA still denies this and is only apologizing for making Sherman show them her colostomy bag and putting Zimmerman’s back brace through a scanner, both of which are against official policy. As Zimmerman said, ”I don’t have a problem with the back brace. I have a problem with being strip-searched.”

The TSA has gotten some (deserved) bad publicity in the past few days due to a couple of very questionable airport security decisions.

On Thursday, a teenage girl was stopped and ordered to check her purse because it had a gun design on it:

“A teenage girl’s sense of style got her in trouble at the airport.

Vanessa Gibbs, 17, claims the Transportation Security Administration stopped her at the security gate because of the design of a gun on her handbag.”

The agents said that it could be considered a replica weapon, which have been banned on airplanes under federal law since 2002. It’s bad enough for governments to trample on people’s right to bear arms…but now they ban gun designs, too? Ridiculous.

In somewhat related news, an elderly lady is claiming that TSA agents strip searched her at JFK Airport in New York:

“An 85-year-old woman said Saturday that she was injured and humiliated when she was strip searched at an airport after she asked to be patted down instead of going through a body scanner, allegations that transportation security officials denied.

Lenore Zimmerman said she was taken to a private room and made to take off her pants and other clothes after she asked to forgo the screening because she worried it would interfere with her defibrillator. She missed her flight and had to take one 2 1/2 hours later, she said.”

It’s worthwhile to point out that the TSA is denying these allegations…but if they are true, then this is just another example of security gone way too far, at the expense of liberty.