Comment by godelski
4 hours ago
I'm fairly confident I could sue that store owner for stalking if they were logging every time I entered that store and left, along with all my activities.
I'm absolutely positive I could if they were getting other store owners to help them track me.
What I don't understand is why this is unacceptable if they do it to a single person but perfectly normal if they do it to all their customers. IMO that should make things worse, not better.
Let's put it this way. You'd get a restraining order against someone if they followed you around all day, logging when you woke up, ate, who you talked with (even if they don't hear the conversation), where you went, and when you went to bed. That's clearly stalking, right? So why us it suddenly acceptable when it's being done by some guy named Mark who is stalking a billion people instead of just one?
We clearly differentiate this from being a regular customer at a store. If I'm a regular at Joe's Corner Market and get a sandwich every Wednesday for lunch then he remembers me because we're talking face to face and making conversation. It's personal. There's clear consent in what I'm sharing and there's a clear expectation that Joe isn't going to use that information to manipulate me or follow me around town. Our interaction is limited to the store and maybe bumping into each other on the street. It's clearly not stalking, we're just friendly. The same way your partner might know about when you wake up, go to sleep, eat for breakfast, and all that same stuff. Your partner isn't stalking you.
[Edit]: I want to encourage the above comments. Doesn't matter if recursive4 believes the other side or not, I want these conversations to be front and center. I like to see the other responses than mine as well and I think these help us refine our arguments and by being prominent they help others be convinced and join us. So while I know we don't usually talk about how to upvote/downvote, I'll just say "vote strategically rather than agreeability" :)
Doesn't your (proverbial) Costco membership card track every time you enter and leave the store? Doesn't seem like anyone is suing them...
Also, if they were logging you specifically, you may have grounds to stand on. But if they're logging every customer that comes in/out (like websites do), I think there is a lot less grounds for a restraining order or anything
Edit: Found out I'm using 'proverbial' wrong but I think you get the idea either way.
So I go to Costco and buy wine, and next week I get a letter from DMV reminding me of the blood alcohol requirements, I get people visit home selling wine glasses, when I go to work someone hands me the best of wines coffee table book, and so on.
Ok but you say - It is not this overt online - well if we live digital life, lot of things are not overt, but we know we need to clean cookies, some of us create containers, some of us use TOR, so the sensibilities in digital are different than real life, and I am showing pretty much equivalent examples / metaphors if the same level of intrusiveness was there in real life.
Costco membership is more like voluntarily accepting cookies.
Even more than that, it’s purchasing a membership that requires authentication when you use the store.
(I get the idea)
Costco is much more like the Joe's Corner Market. I'm only dealing with Costco. It is a bit more invasive than Joe's Corner Market, but I'll admit that I have much more trust for Costco given their history. Like Joe, Costco isn't following me around the store, unless I explicitly ask for their help finding something. They similarly won't follow me outside unless I'm explicitly asking for something like a delivery or some other service. It is always explicit and I'm always aware that I'm being "watched".
But the key difference is that Costco isn't sharing that data with Walmart, Facebook, and others. There is some tracking and I definitely don't like that, but there's a huge difference in going to Costco.com vs Facebook.com or even Google.com. Heading to Costco.com uBlock hits me with 9 blocks. Heading to google.com I get 17 and then it is constantly rising. In the time to write these few sentences it has already hit 30. Meanwhile, costco is still at 9. I mean I'm literally on google.com sitting and staring at a search page doing nothing. There's a much more aggressive and invasive attitude here.
Mind you, nuance and intent matter very much. Without them we wouldn't be able to differentiate a partner you live with and a stalker. Similarly expectations of trust. I'm glad you're asking the question of getting the steelman and pressing, but we must make it clear that if we're going to brush away detail and be dismissive of the nuances then we are contriving an environment where we would be unable to differentiate these things. But again, the consequences of that contrived setting is that we would not be able to differentiate someone's husband/wife from a stalker. And that result is beyond laughable. So maybe the better question is to ask where these lines are drawn. I'm not sure there's an easy answer, but I'm certain it is important.
> Doesn't your (proverbial) Costco membership card track every time you enter and leave the store
No (you have to use it at the register for Costco to know you were there),
and they don't track your every movement in store either,
and they don't track your every movement outside the store either,
and there isn't a standard way to say "I don't want this" which they nonetheless choose to ignore.
> No (you have to use it at the register for Costco to know you were there),
Not the case where I am: Costco scans everyone's card upon entry into the store.
> and they don't track your every movement in store either,
It might: Costco certainly uses security cameras, and it's possible that Costco may be using some sort of AI / facial recognition software alongside the cameras. Perhaps someone who has worked with Costco in security / loss prevention could chime in.
> and they don't track your every movement outside the store either,
Probably true, although who knows whether Costco purchases data about its members from brokers?
> and there isn't a standard way to say "I don't want this" which they nonetheless choose to ignore.
I think you're talking about the equivalent of cookies in the real world, in which case I'd generally agree.
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