Connect three things…
Ben & Jerry’s cart at Busch Stadium
Open ground near Montgomery City, Missouri
Your primary care doctor
We’ll get back to that list in a minute.
A couple of decades ago a friend in law enforcement lamented that the Missouri legislature passed a Concealed Carry law after voters rejected the idea. Still, he felt that the process of getting a background check, required instruction and fees would minimize the impact – though some permit holders will still “be stupid” with their guns.
I doubt my police friend expected that a controlled process of permits and testing would evolve into “guns everywhere.” Yet, a small but dedicated number of activists got their toes in the door with permit carry, then, incrementally, eventually got Missouri law to the point where police can’t stop teenagers from walking down the street carrying assault rifles.
Yes, all sorts of people now complain about the prevalence of guns. The majority party in the legislature doesn’t give a damn. They tolerate a high level of carnage to keep the fringe activists happy. I have to believe even Republicans hate bullets flying around suburban mall parking garages, still they won’t do anything about it.
Back to my list…
You can’t buy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream without a major credit card, or value added to your game ticket via a major credit card. That means “they” know what you bought.
Central Missouri will soon be home to a massive data center. The banks of processors and memory won’t be dedicated to linking struggling families with food pantries, no, they will be collecting billions and billions of tidbits on people – information to be collated and sold, tracking and defining us.
The federal government, since George W. Bush’s era, requires transferrable, searchable digital medical records. I don’t believe the intent was to collect information for Google but (as today’s St. Louis Post Dispatch noted on page 2) personal, private medical information gets sucked into the great collectors.
In other words, technology always move forward heading to places most never expect. A few direct the path, often in the shadows, or, well, things just happen…
The Uh-oh?
More data centers mean more capacity to automatically track and spy on all of us. The “be stupid” rule still applies: some entities will use newly collected data to exploit or hurt us.
For example, a segment of the populace wants all abortion, even using safe medications, banned: buying such pills should be a felony. So, knowing women would work hard to camouflage that pill buy “they” could track buyers of home pregnancy tests, then search that group against ‘suspect’ purchases.
Remember, the USA has no right to privacy in the Constitution. And courts have long tolerated a virtually unlimited ability to collect – and use – data on all of us. A very private decision could result in a very public exposure on the internet. Or a knock at the door one night.
As we move to a cashless society in an age of data centers none of us have secrets.
Yes, I did buy a cup of Ben & Jerry’s at that ball game in late April. It’s in my ‘record.’
Glenn Koenen