"And what would they do with this record? Other than occupy huge quantities of harddrive space and be bored to death? The fact of the matter is that that level of information on the day to day lives of Americans is A - already available if you use credit cards, and B - incredibly useless."
Indeed, you are correct. All the hand-wringing over this stuff is equivalent to worrying about being hit by a meteorite.
The more this tech is used, the more useless the data becomes. The FBI can't even install a computer system to deal with its internal data. What makes anyone think they'll be monitoring individuals' grocery purchases?
This should speed up the checkout line even more, since you won't have to sign after swiping a bank card.
Finally, what do you want to bet that you can also shop in this store with a wallet full of $20 bills.
Yes, indeed...it's panic time.
That's the thing most folks are missing, by and large the government really doesn't care about your fiber intake.
Interesting that you used the phrase "swiping a bank card", in duller moments the last few weeks I've been contemplating how the word "swipe" has changed in the last 20 years. Used to be it almost always meant "steal", now it's almost always meant as a specific form of the verb "use" reserved for things with magnetic data strips. Just a silly thought for a dull day.
They'll use it to retaliate when they know who you are because you rebelled against the establishment. If you don't rock the boat and just blend in, you'll be fine, but they know that they can keep dissenters in line because the dissenters know the government can find them if they decide they want to. Do we want Hillary to have access to this in 2009?