FC: Your grocery list may bring a terror probe, from the Village Voice

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Sun Jul 28 2002 - 23:59:15 PDT

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    From: Georgeat_private
    To: "Paul Wolf" <paulwolfat_private>, "Declan McCullagh" <declanat_private>
    Subject: Ordering pizza using a credit card
    Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2002 15:50:21 -0400
    
    http://villagevoice.com/issues/0230/baard.php
    #
    #        Your Grocery List Could Spark a Terror Probe
    #        Buying Trouble
    #        by Erik Baard
    #        July 24 - 30, 2002
    #
    #    They thought they were making routine purchases-the innocent,
    #    everyday pickups of charcoal and hummus, bleach and sandwich
    #    bags, that keep the modern household running. Regulars at a
    #    national grocery chain, these thousands and thousands of shoppers
    #    used the store's preferred-customer cards, in the process putting
    #    years of their lives on file. Perhaps they expected their records
    #    would be used by marketers trying to better target consumers.
    #    Instead, says the company's privacy consultant, the data was
    #    used by government agents hunting for potential terrorists.
    #
    #    The saga began with a misguided fit of patriotism mere weeks
    #    after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, when a
    #    corporate employee handed over the records-almost literally,
    #    the grocery lists-to federal investigators from three agencies
    #    that had never even requested them. In a flash, the most quotidian
    #    of exchanges became fodder for the Patriot Act.
    #
    #    When the company's legal counsel discovered the breach, she turned
    #    for advice to Larry Ponemon, CEO of the consulting firm Privacy
    #    Council and a former business ethics professor at Babson College
    #    and SUNY. "I told her it's better to be transparent," Ponemon
    #    recalls. "Send a notice to loyalty cardholders telling them what
    #    happened. She agreed and presented that to the board but they
    #    said, 'No, we don't want to hand a smoking gun to litigators.'
    #    " The attorney, who has since resigned from the grocery chain,
    #    declined through Ponemon to be interviewed or to identify herself
    #    or her former employer. To this day, the customers haven't been
    #    informed.
    #
    #    "It wasn't a case of law enforcement being egregiously intrusive
    #    or an evil agency planting a bug or wiretap. It was a marketing
    #    person saying, 'Maybe this will help you catch a bad guy,' "
    #    Ponemon says.
    [snip --DBM]
    To read the full article, pull up the URL.
    
    What happens when the FBI is "pressed" to succeed:
    http://foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,58900,00.html
    #
    #    Mob Informant Scandal Involved Highest Levels of FBI
    #
    #    Saturday, July 27, 2002
    #
    #    BOSTON - For more than 20 years, FBI headquarters in Washington
    #    knew that its Boston agents were using hit men and mob leaders
    #    as informants and shielding them from prosecution for serious
    #    crimes including murder, the Associated Press has learned.
    #
    #    Until now, the still-unraveling Boston FBI scandal has been
    #    portrayed largely as the work of a handful of local agents -
    #     mavericks willing to deal with the devil to bring down a Mafia
    #    family.
    #
    #    But documents obtained by the AP directly connect FBI headquarters
    #    to a pattern of collusion with notorious killers.
    #
    #    The AP found 20 memos from Boston agents to the FBI director's
    #    office, along with six replies, showing that headquarters was
    #    told of the abuses and condoned them.
    #
    #    Written between 1964 and 1987, the memos made it clear to
    #    Washington that the informants had killed and were likely to
    #    kill again, describing one of them as "the most dangerous
    #    individual known" in the Boston area. The memos also alerted
    #    headquarters that two of the informants were crime bosses, active
    #    "at the policy-making level" of criminal enterprises in Boston.
    [snip] 
    
    
    
    
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