Getting off the Grid

MS# 1696/ 614 words

June 21, 2013

 

Getting off the Grid

a column by

Harley L. Sachs

Anyone who has read my columns about surveillance over the years should not be surprised by the so-called revelations that NSA is tracking your phone calls. It’s a useful intelligence gathering method for detecting potential terrorist activity by seeing who calls who when one of the callers is a known terrorist. Like expanding ripples when a stone hits the water, the pattern reveals the center of activity. Of course, to make any sense of this you need enormous data collecting ability and super fast computers to put it all together. NSA has that in its huge complex in Utah. But you’re not a terrorist, so what do you care? Well, you might care. Here’s how:

A woman told me she was shopping in Macy’s when she got a call on her cell phone from a manikin. Seems the store models are equipped with cameras. The dummies are watching. It’s not only Indian casinos that identify your face as you walk in the door. Now some stores do it, too. Using facial recognition, the Macy’s system recognized her, where she was in the store, knew what she usually shopped for, and offered her a discount coupon on her cell phone, since that’s the department she was shopping in.

Grocery stores where you use the so-called club card know what you eat. Stores in the national Kroger conglomerate send that data to a computer in Cleveland where individualized coupons are printed up and sent to you, based on what your past buying history is. The coupons are useable only by you.

Cell phones act like a recording GPS, and can track your movements. When the Boston bombers hijacked the SUV, the escaping owner left his cell phone behind in the car. It took only minutes to locate it for the shootout that brought the incident to a blazing end. That tracking method was also used in a jewel robbery case when the cell phone records proved the movements and location of the robbers. If you have a cell phone, they know where you are.

If you value your privacy, your only hope is to get off the grid. You have to think like a spy or a criminal.  Get rid of the cell phone. No more texting. You also need to never use an ATM machine. They keep a record of who was there, with their photos, how much they withdrew, and when. Avoid them. But what about checks? No good, either, for your bank statement shows what you bought, how much you spent, and of course the sales slip lists what you paid for. Oh, and by the way: get rid of the credit cards. They track your purchases and the time and place they were used.

So: no cell phone, no credit cards, no check book, no ATMs. But there’s more: your web surfing is recorded, and all your tweets are saved by the NSA. We already knew email was screened. Best not to use a home computer connected to the web in any way. .No more internet on line shopping.  They know what sites you visit and who your Facebook friends are.

So what is left? You have to go back to a strictly cash basis. This makes it hard to buy an airplane ticket or make a hotel reservation, but if you are trying to preserve your privacy,  this demands some sacrifice. Like my son-in-law with no bank account or credit card, you live out of your pocket.

Ah, but what about that scene in Macy’s? With no cell phone, you can’t be offered that in store coupon. This gets us down to the facial recognition program. We have to do something about your face. Maybe wear a burka?