Quote:
Originally Posted by cjottawa
Face it: most of us are "nobodies" the government and big business is indifferent toward, aside from as a source of revenue. The tin-foil-hat-crowd needs to get over themselves.
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Privacy: Keeping Uncle Sam Out of Your Amazon Account
TIME Magazine, Nov. 03, 2010
http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...029166,00.html
It's been on a disturbing campaign to force Amazon.com to give it detailed records on which First Amendment–protected products its residents have bought online. Last week, a federal court said no in an important win for online-privacy rights — but more remains to be done.
The court case stems from a war over sales taxes between North Carolina and Amazon. The North Carolina tax department says Amazon failed to collect sales taxes on about 50 million transactions with North Carolinians between 2003 and early 2010. As part of a tax audit, North Carolina asked the e-commerce giant to provide, for that time period, "all information for all sales to customers with a North Carolina shipping address."
Amazon partially complied, turning over a lot of records. . .
. . .
It is good that a federal court slapped down North Carolina last week, but it is not enough. The real problem is that online retailers are assembling so much data about people, without their active consent — and generally without their knowledge. If a bookstore insisted that you provide your name and address every time you bought a book or a magazine with cash, you would no doubt find it odd — and offensive. But that is precisely what online retailers do. As a result, they end up with vast stores of information about you — which the government may be able to get simply by asking for it with a subpoena.