I heard this on the car radio this morning (sorry, I tried to find it on NPR's website to document it, but couldn't, but I'm sure you'll take my word for it. It should come as no surprise to any of us.

Purchasing behavior data is being collected on individual consumers through monitoring of their buying habits, particularly through credit cards. This allows personal profiles to be developed on individuals which can be used to predict their consumer habits. This is nothing new, but the latest way this data is being used is certainly novel. If your consumption patterns are determined to be a predictor of your credit status, they can be used to automatically affect your credit card terms and interest. So, if you buy breakfast at MacDonald's with your credit card, or you buy retread auto tires instead of new ones, you are tagged as belonging to a group with a potentially higher credit risk. Your credit card interest rate can be affected. It makes no difference if you pay your bills on time or not, your behavior as a consumer is used against you to get you to pay more than someone else.

In other words, something you do which is perfectly legal, even commonplace, and affects no one else in any way can be used to determine what you pay for a service (credit). And if information collected on you is in error, how do you go about getting it corrected? How do you even learn about the error? Isn't there a constitutional provision against illegal searches and seizures? How is this different from someone barging into your office and looking at your personal papers, such as business receipts and tax records, without a warrant? My creditors routinely have access to facts about me that they carefully conceal from me about themselves. And since raw, unedited, potentially incorrect data is a commodity, to be peddled openly, they have this information even if they have never done any business with me at all.

The complete automation of all business transactions in a society of instant communications and data retrieval is more than just an inconvenience, and there is more at risk here than the possiblity we will be bombarded with advertising specifically tailored to our tastes and past purchasing behavior. What it does is to allow the seller to have much more information on the buyer than the opposite, and information is power. In a marketplace where the consumer only sees carefully crafted advertising from the producer, and where the latter has access to real time information of the former, how can a free market operate?