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Enjoying Technology's Conveniences But Not Escaping Its Watchful Eyes
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8:30 a.m.
She takes a cellphone call from her daughter.
After a brief chat, she hangs up. But her cellphone is still sending its ID signals to the nearest cellular towers, giving her phone company her approximate location. Approximate, but precise enough that the FBI has used such information to locate suspects, and marketers are contemplating using it for targeted cellphone advertising pitches by text message.
8:35 a.m.
Bernard pulls into an Exxon Mobil gas station. She holds a small wand called a Speedpass to a sensor at the gas pump.
The gadget uses radio frequency identification (RFID) waves to charge her Exxon Mobil account directly. No cash. No card swipe.
RFID chips are being placed in credit cards, passports and items on store shelves. Some people have even had chips injected into their bodies so emergency-room doctors can have instant access to their medical records. The chips can track, conduct transactions and in some cases be hacked. They transmit information to private databases. Civil libertarians fear that one day soon this will mean a retailer could recognize Bernard as soon as she walks in the door, even before she identifies herself, or that data brokers could track how many times she entered a bar, even if she paid cash.
By default, Exxon Mobil has the right to share her name and other information it collects on her with "consumer reporting agencies, banks, insurance companies, retailers, publishers and direct marketers" unless Bernard "opts out." But she has never done so.
Such information is often buried in the privacy polices sent in the mail or posted on retail Web sites that Bernard never bothers to read. "I don't know anyone who's read them," she says.
8:40 a.m.
Bernard enters her Coldwell Banker office building and is recorded by a hidden security camera.
10:25 a.m.
