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Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Someone you don't know knows things about you. He might know what you eat. That you don't have kids. That you are lactose-intolerant (Equal rights for lactose! End lactose hate NOW!). That you have cats, and you spoil them rotten. (BTW, if you have cats and DON'T spoil them rotten, you're mean. You ought to wuv your widdle fuzzy wuzzy cuddlekins all to pieces. But I digress.)
Somewhere, he is plotting. He is going to make his move. Slowly, carefully, with inhuman stealth and cunning he formulates his evil plan. One day soon, when you least expect it, you will return home and find, in your mailbox...
(Sudden symphonic music clash)
...a coupon good for 50 cents off Greedy Kitty Genuine Shrimp Bits In Icky Goop Cat Food!
The horror. The horror.
Camera pulls back. Fade out.
If you're less-than-petrified at this scenario, good. Try explaining this to the latest breed of alarmists and so-called 'consumer rights activists' whom, it seems, actually want consumers to spend more money on products and waste time wading through unwanted and inapplicable coupons and advertisements than they already do.
It seems that, all around the world, Evil Corporations (and are there any other kind?) are gathering up all sorts of data about you -- yes, you, personally, 6079 Smith W -- and will nefariously and unscrupulously use it to -- wait for it -- try to SELL you things! Those rat bastards! How DARE they try to entice you to buy their products by offering you discounts on them! What's WRONG with them? Greedy corporate scumbucket exploiters of the proletariat, making you an offer you are perfectly free to reject! Undercutting their competitors in typical evil dog-eat-dog brutal profit-hungry fashion by enticing poor helpless you with coupons for 50 cents off! Clearly, the government ought to regulate this practice.
"But what about my privacy?" you ask. Well, here's some hard facts for you:There is no 'right to privacy'. There never was. No 'right' can exist which imposes obligations on another. A 'right to privacy' is, at the heart, a right to force people to pretend they don't know something, or keep them from making observations they have every right to make.
There are many other rights you DO have, which, together, form a sort of pseudo-right of privacy. You don't have to volunteer any information to anyone who asks. You don't have to allow people into your house. You can encrypt your email and your phone conversations. You can use a false name and a false address.
In other words, you are under no moral or ethical obligation to actively provide information. But no one else is under any moral or ethical obligation to refrain from using whatever information you DO provide. When you enter the perceptual range of another, the information he can gather about you by observing you becomes, ultimately, his property -- he 'owns' the knowledge he has gained by observing you.
Likewise, you don't have the right to unilaterally impose conditions on a contract. If MegaloMart tracks purchases for some reason, and you don't like that, you can stop shopping at MegaloMart. If this means you have to pay more to shop somewhere else, well, that's the price you pay. You can't FORCE MegaloMart to change their business practices, save by the time-honored and totally ethical manner of taking your business elsewhere and convincing other people to do likewise. But don't be surprised if you end up paying extra for the 'service' of NOT gathering demographic information.
In the 'put my money where my mouth is' department, I hereby make public my last weeks grocery receipt. I hope this won't come back to haunt me in the future.
So, there you go. From this, you might falsely conclude I eat a lot healthier than I actually do -- all those tofu and vegetables and things -- but the fact is, I order in far too much, and all those vegetables end up mixed with a lot of beef and pork. You'd also falsely conclude I don't drink way too much soda, but I actually buy it at the overpriced deli downstairs, rather than lugging it home from the store.
And I've just proven, BTW, that not only will some people post their shopping list to the World Wide Web..someone else will read it.
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