What Surveillance Valley knows about you

The Google bait in the lede and the failure to address it at all is wonderfully classic Yasha Levine. Here is the link from the article on the event that caused this- it&#x27;s slightly more succinct:<p><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/12/19/data-broker-removes-rape-victims-list-after-journal-inquiry/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.wsj.com&#x2F;digits&#x2F;2013&#x2F;12&#x2F;19&#x2F;data-broker-removes-r...</a>

Lets be realistic about how the &quot;rape sufferers&quot; incident happened. They started with some list of standard medical conditions joined against users:<p><pre><code> condition user dermatititis 1 rape 2 athletes foot 3 </code></pre> Then they did this:<p><pre><code> SELECT UNIQUE(condition) FROM user_sufferers &lt;h1&gt; Lists for sale &lt;&#x2F;h1&gt; {% for condition in conditions %} &lt;li&gt; {{condition}} sufferers &lt;&#x2F;li&gt; {% endfor %} </code></pre> Fundamentally no different from<p><pre><code> [&quot;Keep Calm and {{verb}} a Lot&quot; t-shirts for verb in list_of_verbs]: </code></pre> <a href="http://singularityhub.com/2013/03/20/keep-calm-and-rape-a-lot-t-shirts-show-automation-growing-pains/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;singularityhub.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;03&#x2F;20&#x2F;keep-calm-and-rape-a-lo...</a><p>The fact that things like rape, pregnancy [1], etc are detectible by computers makes great headlines. But we shouldn&#x27;t act as if MedBase was deliberately targeting [{{condition}} sufferers for condition in hot_button_list] - that&#x27;s fundamentally dishonest.<p>[1] See the case when Target knew some teenager was interested in products X, Y, Z, where the correlation was driven by the underlying causation of pregnancy.

&quot;How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did&quot; --<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;kashmirhill&#x2F;2012&#x2F;02&#x2F;16&#x2F;how-targe...</a><p>This event is referenced in TFA. I remember reading it when it first came out and was (a) amazed at the ability to analyze purchasing data and come to conclusions such as this and (b) worried.<p>Previously, I never really cared for carrying cash so I used a credit card for almost everything I purchased -- online, of course, but also in person. Nowadays, I pay cash anytime I can: at the gas station, the supermarket, at restaurants, etc. I also stopped using my &quot;loyalty&quot; card at the supermarket and obtained a new one that was not connected to me in any way.<p>I&#x27;m not buying anything I shouldn&#x27;t be, of course. I&#x27;m just of the &quot;it&#x27;s none of their business&quot; mindset. This has carried over into other parts of my life as well, such as logging as little personal information as possible at work (ISP) and retaining it for as short of a period as possible.

<p><pre><code> &gt; Normally, such detailed health information would fall under &gt; federal law and could not be disclosed or sold without &gt; consent. But because these data harvesters rely on indirect &gt; sources of information instead of medical records, they’re &gt; able to sidestep regulations put in place to protect the &gt; privacy of people’s health data. </code></pre> What &quot;indirect sources of information&quot; could be used to identify thousands of rape victims?

Is it possible to purchase all the information they have on you? I&#x27;m curious to see the extent of what they have on me.