Scary...

[Big Media]

This scared the bejesus out of me. Sad truth is, it is not far off from reality.

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

[AmpedNow]

This is why we need privacy laws.

You're right. This is the very near future.

It all started when our social security numbers became our de facto national id. We don't even need a scary national ID for this to happen.

It is actually illegal for private corporations to track people by their SS numbers. But nobody cares about that anymore. For example, if you were ever fired from Wal-Mart, try getting a job there about 10 years later... You will still be in their "blacklist" system.

[Lester]

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/01/li ... ebook-ads/

Update 6/2/08: Riya/Like founder Munjal Shah got back to us to let us know that, while his company’s technology could do this, in this case it was indeed a coincidence.

[Arp2]

This scared the bejesus out of me. Sad truth is, it is not far off from reality.

"Not far off?"

Already exists....Google and all its close, personal ties to the Democrats.

[sportsvoice]

[Ace Purple]

That isn't far off from what I fear the future will bring us.

[Dr. Whiplash]

Scary, indeed.

A close friend lost his job to downsizing in January. He's been rejected by a number of employers for jobs he was qualified for. One of them recently told him why: His 'criminal record' consisting of one conviction for misdemeanor battery six years ago (shoving match - the other dude was also convicted) plus his poor credit rating, which is entirely due to losing his job!

Many may already know this but it was news to me: that employers are contracting for data-mining background checks, using the results to reject people for any past mistake or financial problem that shows up.

Not many opportunities for fresh starts or second chances when an employer is relying on a printout from a damn database somewhere.

[AmpedNow]

Yes, and since most of us are not perfect, we will wind up with a huge pool of "undesirable" people kicking cans down the street. You know those people who never return library books and are occasionally late on insurance payments just aren't worth the risk...



Also, corporations don't own people. What people do in their personal lives are none of their business, if it doesn't directly affect their work. They want their "qualified" pool to be mindless drones with no personal lives...you know, stuff that might make someone not want to work 14-hour days when asked.

They want more and more while giving less and less.

Again, this is why we need privacy laws.

The one positive to all of this is it encourages self-employment. Who the hell wants to work for a corp with big brother policies?

[cgarison]

Not too far off. Here at HEX, we have a system that can bring up all of that information from one Data Warehouse and attach it to the sales record created by the POS system. Charming! to say the least.

Good news is that through PCS, even though the numbers are in our database, they are encrypted so that 99% of the people in the company cannot see them.