Re: Something that just crossed my mind. Sorry.

[snow <snow@smoke.suba.com>]

On Mon, 3 Jun 1996, Senator Exon wrote:
> At 10:01 AM 5/31/96 -0700, Sandy wrote:
> >At 10:35 PM 5/30/96 -0500, snow wrote:
> >>It is my position (until proven wrong--please) that larger business DON'T
> >>want anonymity. They _want_ to be able to track purchases and use of their
> >>product for several reasons. 

> Let me first claim that I am an employee of a "larger business."  Not
> that unless someone tracks me through the remailers is there any proof
> of that, but accept for now that it's not outside of the realm of
> possibility. 

> I wish I could prove you wrong.  I can inform you that you are correct,
> actually.  There are large retail companies that track sales data on
> credit card account numbers and cardholder names in direct violation of
> any contract you may have with American Express (and possibly Visa and
> others, I have not seen those contracts).  The data they capture is
> pretty impressive.  I'm sure most of you probably get a direct mailing
> or two from them every now and then, based on your shopping habits. 

	Hell, I just paid off all my credit cards, and they are in the
process of decomposing. Credit is evil. Cash is much more difficult to
track, and it is much harder to spend much beyond your means when paying
cash.

> >2)      Big businesses are made up of individuals.
> >        Most individuals would still prefer to have 
> >        their own privacy preserved even if they would 
> >        prefer less privacy for others.  
> 
> All it takes is one well-positioned executive who values profits more
> than his own privacy to say "Capture this personal data" and that data
> gets captured, regardless of who gets fired complaining about it.  Trust
> me.  And I value my job more than I value your privacy, which is why
> this is going out through a remailer. 

	Also remember, people like to live. They like their children to
live. Governments are made of people, Governments start wars and get the
population to go along with it. 
	
	Bigger Corporations are like governments. 

Petro, Christopher C.
petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow@crash.suba.com