--- From: "J.D. Abolins" <jda-ir@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> Subject: [priv] FYI: Shopping Cards article's rebuttal and acknowledgement by article's author Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 00:06:19 -0400 This was an interesting item from the Baltimore City Paper Online Letters section (as of Mon 27 Oct 2003; looks like it will scroll of the site soon). Among other things, it shows how confusing and erroneous info came come up with some of the privacy issues and activism. (Sometimes, it is the interpretation of the "they don't but they could" comments that can have a life of their own. Thus, it becomes important to chase the original sources. I have gotten burned number of times on this myself. <blush>) I admire Joab Jackson's integrity in his response when it would be tempting to schluff off the letter's statements. J.D. Abolins http://www.citypaper.com/current/pf/mail_pf.html Raw Deal The "Card Games" article <http://www.citypaper.com/2003-10-01/feature.html> featured in your Oct. 1 edition misstated that Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) spokeswoman Liz McIntyre "comes up short" in supplying examples of cases in which supermarket "loyalty card" data was misused or used against the shopper. In fact, McIntyre, indicated to the author, Joab Jackson, and later to City Paper's fact checker that Katherine Albrecht should be contacted for examples. Ms. Albrecht is the founder and director of CASPIAN, and she is researching supermarket loyalty cards for her Harvard doctoral thesis. Other salient misstatements or misleading statements in the article include, but are not limited to, the following: Article misstatement: " . . . chances are Catalina knows you. The company works with about 18,000 supermarkets nationwide (its Web site lists Giant, Safeway, Food Lion, and CVS as customers, among others), keeping a database of 100,000 households." Fact: Catalina Marketing indicates it manages "the second largest real-time transactional database in the world." Reportedly it has access to up to 65 weeks of historical purchase data and records for over 100 million households. Article misstatement: "Although most stores say they don't sell the data to outside parties, they do frequently sell it to 'partners' or companies that do business with the stores, CASPIAN claims." Fact: No one from CASPIAN makes this claim, and this is not indicated at the CASPIAN Web site, www.nocards.org. In fact, CASPIAN does not believe that the stores sell this data, though theoretically it could be shared. Article misstatement: "But contrary to CASPIAN's contention, cardholders do enjoy good savings from time to time. . . . You may have a Super Savings Card, but it isn't a Super Duper Savings Card. You're probably not saving more than you would be in no-card stores." Fact: CASPIAN and numerous news organizations have shown that shoppers pay higher prices on average at stores with loyalty cards--even after factoring in "loyalty card savings." For example, in January 2003, The Wall Street Journal examined the prices at card and noncard stores in five American cities (Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Brooklyn, N.Y., and San Francisco). Here is its reported conclusion: "In all five comparisons, we wound up spending less money in a supermarket that doesn't offer a card--in one case 29 percent less." Article misstatement: "CASPIAN encourages consumers not to use cards when shopping as a way to send a message to the markets. Some message. Sending that message to Safeway would have cost you $9.48--payable directly to Safeway itself." Fact: While it is true that CASPIAN discourages shoppers from using "loyalty cards," the author failed to take into account the second crucial part of CASPIAN's message, which is to boycott stores that require cards to "qualify" for sales prices. CASPIAN encourages shoppers to seek out privacy-friendly, card-free stores where the prices are likely to be lower overall. We would never encourage shoppers to pay higher prices overall at a store that invades their privacy. Article misstatement: "CASPIAN's McIntyre paints a picture of a consumer-friendly Orwellian nightmare. . . . For instance, she postulates, it would be possible, if not probable, for some fiendish corporation or government agency to collect a list of every item you own, using the tag numbers of the items you purchased." Fact: At no point has anyone affiliated with CASPIAN referred to radio frequency identification tags (RFID) as "consumer friendly." In fact, we believe just the opposite. In addition, a corporation or government does not have to be "fiendish" to access consumer databases. For example, a business might want to access records about shopper purchases for marketing reasons. It is probable that even mainstream companies will be very interested in studying shopper behavior via RFID data since they already do so with other tools currently in use. Katherine Albrecht Director Liz McIntyre Communications Director Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering Nashua, N.H. Joab Jackson replies: I apologize to Liz McIntyre. She did ask that I speak with CASPIAN founder Katherine Albrecht about providing examples on store misuse of shopping card data. Unfortunately, Albrecht was not available before the article's deadline. Still, it was an egregious error on my part to infer in the article that McIntyre was speaking for CASPIAN about shopping cards. I profusely apologize for my mistake and any hardship it might have caused McIntyre or CASPIAN. ==== The article, "Card Games" is at http://www.citypaper.com/2003-10-01/feature.html _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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