While it shouldn’t surprise anyone, unless something is done to stop the data miners (like massive lawsuits), your credit card purchases are soon likely to be examined by your health care providers and insurance companies.
You may soon get a call from your doctor if you’ve let your gym membership lapse, made a habit of picking up candy bars at the check-out counter or begin shopping at plus-sized stores.
That’s because some hospitals are starting to use detailed consumer data to create profiles on current and potential patients to identify those most likely to get sick, so the hospitals can intervene before they do.
Information compiled by data brokers from public records and credit card transactions can reveal where a person shops, the food they buy, and whether they smoke. The largest hospital chain in the Carolinas is plugging data for 2 million people into algorithms designed to identify high-risk patients, while Pennsylvania’s biggest system uses household and demographic data. Patients and their advocates, meanwhile, say they’re concerned that big data’s expansion into medical care will hurt the doctor-patient relationship and threaten privacy.
I am told that this is all about a huge collective love affair with Big Data. A mass orgy involving MBAs, Economists, control freaks with degrees in Public Policy and Public Health, and an infinite host of government bureaucrats hell bent on “helping” us.
The president of a data mining company might like it in principle, but not in practice! He uses cash for “suspicious” transactions.
Bastards. They all believe they have a right and a duty to invade virtually everyone’s privacy. You would think economists would realize that people would respond this way.
Which would mean what? Will people using cash become suspect purchasers?
That last question is rhetorical. (And lame.)
Comments
5 responses to “Your life is suspicious!”
I wish that question were just rhetorical. But it’s not–that’s our future.
This is why I refuse to have a credit card. This is why I refuse to have a bank account, or to do business with banks in any way. This is why I do all my business in cash. This is why I refuse to have an account on Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, Google+, or whatever the “social media” flavor of the week is.
I am a human being. I am not a number. I am not a product. I am not for sale. My privacy is not for sale. The private details of my personal life are not for sale. This is not negotiable.
Have decided to start using cash for anything that might be “suspicious.” Like food.
Considering ditching the cell phone. But that is harder….
Maybe I should put the HAM radio back in the car.
I’m surprised the tyrants aren’t trying to outlaw cash.
What makes you think they aren’t, Brett?
Every few years they float the trial balloon. All the Sunday supplements, and their 21st Century online equivalents, print articles in which they squee breathlessly about the miraculous benefits of the “cashless society” that’s coming Real Soon Now.
And MINITRU tells us, again and again and again and again: using cash for anything whatsoever, even buying a cup of coffee, is suspicious and weird, and should be reported to your MINLUV blockwarden immediately.
http://www.itworld.com/security/249076/how-avoid-being-tagged-terrorist-dont-pay-cash-coffee
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.335604-Buying-things-with-your-own-money-appears-to-be-considered-suspicious-activity-now?page=3
And, of course, using PGP, TOR, or other online privacy tools is a sure sign of THOUGHTCRIMINALS, and that’s DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD.
http://boingboing.net/2012/02/02/fbi-tells-the-public-that-tor.html
Coming soon, to a country near you.