Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
feb97 state.txt
on the Web site. Countries not participating in such agreements
are involuntarily eavesdropped, as already happens with the Echelon system.
Outdated Ideas
What I have said above underpins the cliche of almighty intelligence agencies.
While they certainly have comprehensive access to your data, there are many
other organizations that know a lot about you. For example, do you have a
customer card for your favorite department store? It might not worry you if
this store knows that you bought a huge pack of diapers for 14.95 pounds at
11.47 on September 23. But the more buying transactions are recorded, the
more information can be won about you.
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Do you prefer hot sales or brands? Do you respond to price reductions?
Do you look for a good price - performance ratio?
•
Do you pick articles from the front shelf, or do you discover 'hid-
den' stuff?
•
Do you buy regularly or on certain days of the month? (Aha, that's
probably when you get your paycheck.)
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What books, perfumes, and clothes do you prefer?
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Has your buying pattern changed over the past few years?
You see that appropriate software can help build a personality image from
'totally harmless' buying activities. You will now better understand why you
get discounts on your customer card. I recall the data harvesting at Wal-Mart
mentioned above, that comprises at least 24 TB. This is 24 times more than all
postings in Usenets (newsgroups) of the past 90 days. (By the way, these Usenet
postings are stored in Great Britain and are presumably regularly evaluated by
the GCHQ [Wobghm].)
If you now think that this can't happen in Germany, believing that things like
this aren't allowed, I have to disappoint you. Apart from the fact that infor-
mation has no national borders anymore, I want to briefly tell you something
about a cashier slip I got in a renowned clothing store in March 2001. I paid
with my bank card and accidentally signed that the firm is authorized to ask
my bank for my name and address in case the debit cannot be honored. That's
all right. But then there was some small print: 'I agree that in the event of
