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Comment by jameshart | Hacker News Reader

What's the basis for this advice?

Personally I'd be far more interested to learn that someone running for office refuses to use a credit card to buy groceries because they fear having that information collected and used against them... than that they once spent $500 in a single month on Twinkies.

If someone wants to use your spending history against you they don't actually need your credit card bills these days, they can just make something up. Look at the insanity that people managed to create out of John Podesta's office pizza orders.

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> What's the basis for this advice?

"The GoBeRmEnT Is GoNa TrAcK YoU"

Listen, you got a cell phone, and chances are that's going to give away far, far more than data that your credit card company holds on to.

They're just going to have a line -- "Food Lion, [Date] $88.23" -- not detailed list of your purchases.

Meanwhile if you use a membership card at any sort of grocery store, they absolutely will associate it with you; in many cases you have to register that card with your name and phone in order to use the points. Cash or credit, that's tracking you.

Until modern social media that -- grocery store membership cards -- were one of the best predictors of age, income, gender, etc. available.

That's why you should always check to see if some kind soul has pre-registered [local area code]-867-5309

I once used that as my number at Garage Center, then didn’t shop there for ~10 years. When I went back, I’d forgotten. The kid at the register tried looking me up by email, my actual cell number, my previous one, and then finally resorted to *gasp* my actual name.

Then, having found me, I asked what number was in there, and he proceeded to read, with exactly zero recognition, <area code> 867-5309, and I just laughed on the outside, and cried a little on the inside.

It’s not the government that concerns me, it’s the corporations. And I don’t think it’s a contest or even matters if cell phones give more data. I’m worried about both.

No corporation can point a gun at my head and force me into a steel cage.

No matter how evil and corrupt a given corporation is, it could never be as bad as a government.

Not yet [1]. Total symbiosis of corporations and government—to the point of making Mussolini blush—is the ultimate goal. Sure, that sounds paranoid, but look at how far we've come on that spectrum in the last 30 years. Proliferation of technology (due to its enabling of surveillance and weakening of the state) all but guarantees that future.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk

When you make statements like ‘Total symbiosis of corporations and government … is the ultimate goal’ without attributing that goal to anyone, you come off as sounding a little bit tinfoil hat.

Boston Dynamics is no more (and honestly in many ways far less) enmeshed in the security state than any number of military suppliers. Seems like a poor argument that things are specifically bad now or getting worse on this front.

If you’d pointed at Palantir perhaps you’d have had a point.

Not that you'll view it as valid but I'm using abductive logic. I shared the Boston Dynamics thing in jest, but I'd love to hear valid reasons for the existence of a bipedal robot that can run and scale over objects. Are these things being used to down dissidents a reality today? No, but it's a perfectly logical conclusion for what's down the pike.

FWIW, too, the "tinfoil hat" thing doesn't work on me. I will smugly tighten mine as I look down upon the naive proletariat being manhandled as "Do You Love Me" [1] is played over the crowd control loudspeakers.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw

I think "to the point of making Mussolini blush" gives enough background to take the comment seriously without demanding piles of documents.

Few Americans are aware even now of the role of IBM in mechanizing and tabulating the murder of Jews for the Nazis, and basically no Americans were aware of it then[0]. "They" who desire "symbiosis" between corporate power and government power - a better word would be fusion - are the same corporations who promoted fascism in the US and abroad throughout the 20th Century, whose continued efforts we can see daily through virtually all channels in our society.

Name one sphere of society in which corporate power has not merged with or overrun democratic governmental oversight. Name one environmental, social or economic battle that grassroots democratic movements or western governments have won against the corrosive force of corporate profiteering in the last 30 years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

This line of argument seems to be common to other responders telling me my concerns are "fringy" insofar as they invoke concerns about governments.

My concerns aren't exclusive to governments or corporations. The degree of co-mingingling of personnel and regulatory capture at this point makes the difference moot. Whoever has the data on every purchase you made since 2012 can silence you, threaten you, blackmail you, or force you out of a public or private position, if there's any difference between those things now. It doesn't matter if you're innocent or the law is on your side; all that matters is perception. Someone who wants you in can hide anything you did; someone who wants you out can find the smallest detail that you accidentally allowed to be recorded, and amplify it. It really makes no difference whether it's a government agency, or a corporation. Splitting hairs on that or saying I'm necessarily paranoid because my concern runs more toward government abuse is an argument about nothing more than the superficial, speculative scenario. The data is the data, and anyone who has it has power. Power is power, and it's only realized when you can wield it over people. Handing anyone your full purchasing history is giving them the power to subjugate you.

A friend who worked in credit finance many years ago warned me they were “thinking” (wink wink) about doing things like selling your food purchase history to medical insurance companies for the purposes of declining claims on the basis of long-term bad eating habits. I believe it was and still is illegal, but if corporations are allowed to do this, then they will, and it’s worth it to them.

I wouldn’t conflate political shenanigans and things that make the news with systemic forces. Made up things don’t always, or even often, pass muster in court. But true information being lawfully used against you will result in no legal recourse.

...this is already legal for some decades. if you are in a rewards program you agreed to have you anonymized sales history (i mean, they will not list "ate burgers" but "ate at fiveguys" is pretty similar).

after that you need some magic to deanonymize the anonymized data, but in the 90s plenty of people claimed to do that already. the famous case was infact with health insurance and burgers... but i can't recall any names.

edit: in the usa

I interpreted it more as “it’s a trail of information that could be used against you” instead of literally, but I could be wrong

If you look at the recent history of scandals that have had zero to negative reputational impact on politicians and public figures in Western democracies - we’re talking Access Hollywood, tax fraud, undeclared gifts, gross nepotism, punching journalists, flouting public health laws, sexual impropriety, lying about your career and life story, mishandling of classified information, and just plain incompetence - what on earth do you think the harm could be of someone getting hold of someone’s old credit card bills?

A resourced adversary relentlessly publicizing them?

Given how relentlessly (just to pick a particular example) Epstein's crimes, accomplices, and associated have been publicized, and the negligible impact, why do you think that would be impactful?

Seems like it’s pretty tricky to make anything stick: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/supreme-court-...

And literally nobody would care. Regardless of whether the accusations are true or not, the other side is already convinced the politician's in question is a baby-blood-drinking child abuser, while their side will be convinced its just a baseless smear campaign by done by butt-hurt losers.

Life isn't a song, nobody in politics these days actually faces the consequences just because they were a rapist/adulterer/wearing blackface/drag/doing felony fraud/etc.

Because three letter agencies have a huge incentive to trawl through politicians' private lives through credit card purchase data, and use that against them if they don't want to toe the line of these agencies, whose ex-employees are guests on the main stream media. Just leak enough to derail any politician.

There's presumably a lot of evidence of this you can point to...?

Read about J. Edgar Hoover.

Is he back?!

Obtuse reverse skepticism is not a good look.

Pointing to a guy who’s been dead 50 years seems like weak evidence for the claim that government agencies are widely incentivized to undermine political candidates by… selectively leaking their grocery shopping habits?

They’ll look for anything they can find, when they need to. There are whole organizations devoted to digging up dirt, and others devoted to countering/deflecting it.

Risk minimization sounds prudent if you’re a target.

If the very first director of the FBI immediately abused his position to blackmail everyone around, what do you think has been going on in the intervening 75 years?

The front page of HN today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36123670

The constraints and incentives for agencies like the FBI have changed a lot since Hoover (in no small part due to the abuses under Hoover.)

“Read about J. Edgar Hoover” is a handwave, rather than an argument, and its made worse when it supposed to support a position on the current state of affairs.

The OP asked for examples, not arguments.

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