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Sometimes Freepers assume that a fellow Freeper has read every article on FR, or enough of them to follow the point they are trying to make, but that is often not the case so here are a couple of articles, for your viewing enjoyment, that have set off a few questions about just what the heck does hummus and charcoal have to do with terrorism and do we really want the Fed or the D.A. to know just how much beer someone buys.

"Buying Trouble - Your Grocery List Could Spark a Terror Probe"

I'm throwing this other article in free of charge.

"Feds seek comments on Patriot Act: Agency developing means for 'information sharing' among banks"

This upsets some people, other's it doesn't. I know that America has regained it's equilibrium after some pretty bad government decisions, hope it does in the future as well.

I@`rying to educate me (though your links didn't work). Yes, I did read about the grocery-store story.

"It wasn't a case of law enforcement being egregiously intrusive or an evil agency planting a bug or wiretap. It was a marketing person saying, 'Maybe this will help you catch a bad guy,' " Ponemon says.

Damn that evil abusive government!!! Wait... this doesn't quite fit the template, does it?

Hmm. But I speak too soon. I should still be Up In Arms. After all, there were all those people arrested, persecuted, imprisoned, flogged as a result of this grocery-list thing. Right? What were there names, remind me. It's on the tip of my tongue.

Look, the article reinforces my point: what it mainly talks about is that a bunch of algorithms are being used to sift the data and try to find something interesting. There are even tons of quotes in it about how using algorithms to do this is a flawed approach. The specific case cited (a grocery chain employee handing over lists without even being requested to) is obviously wrong, and the grocery chain knows it (and is scared of prosecution/lawsuits). Meanwhile, there's not even any indication that anything harmful resulted from it. So I'm supposed to start panicking? Sorry to disappoint, but I still need an actual reason.

If you wanna panic, though, go right ahead. Best,