Can you pay cash?
It's not like your cash purchase of 58.32kr has a match 578.32 kr withdrawal; that cash was taken from an ATM in a large, round-number bundle.
If you ever misremember the amount cash in your wallet, and, rather than just abandoning your basket at the checkout when you discover this, you pay with a card just one time, for that exact basket, when there is no cash customer for that basket on that night, they can now be pretty certain about who customer #5678 is, and can then link you to 95% of your historic purchases too.
OpSec is hard, yo.
For example, store POS system tracks nearby MAC addresses (simplest to do, very archaic). You always have your phone on you. Game Over. Even if you pay cash, if you've ever paid with a bank card connected to your identity next to that phone a logical inference can be made that the cash transaction XYZ is related to pseudonymous ID ABC if phone P's identifier was present at time of purchase.
That's what the entire point of things like Google Wallet/Pay is. Another means of directly attaching payment methods to your ID. Once that bank card is connected to you all transactions for that card from any source is also connected to you. From that every ID present at time of purchase is one step removed from you.
And so it goes...
...or, for the kind of analyses they say they are looking to make.
As for monitoring - as said elsewhere, if monitoring of supermarket sales will happen or not depends not only on what that particular office wants (SSB - central statistics bureau), but what politicians decide on. And, despite many comments here believing otherwise, it is actually quite common for Norwegian politicians to listen to massive resistance from the people, particularly when the reasoning behind the whole suggestion is quite questionable, as in this case. In any case, whether alcohol is sold here or there it wouldn't make any difference to the monitoring. And cash is still legal tender in Norway, even if there are some that don't like that fact. As for myself I believe only Mastercard really know how much money I use on wine. I don't think they know my preferences though (Italian, as it were)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_sta...
How do they feel about being responsible of delivering poison to people then? Somehow I can rationalize it if it's a transaction between private parties, but if the government acts as the drug dealer it's no better than a cartel.
Amazon can not compel you to buy from them, and Amazon can not throw you in jail if they don't like you as a customer.
Mining personal data and using it against the interests of the individual is bad in both cases, but it is far more dangerous when done by the State.
Of course they can, by becoming a monopoly and driving all other options for things you need out of business. Also by manipulating you with advertisements and propaganda. Coercion has many forms.
Now, who can break the Government apart if it starts abusing its power?
States fall for many reasons, but primarily causes are war and revolution (which are sometimes the same thing.)
> States fall for many reasons, but primarily causes are war and revolution
So, the way to get rid of Amazon would be to get the Government to simply start a judicial process against a company. The way to get rid of the Government would require bloodshed. Can we agree that that n corrupt and power-abusive Government is far more dangerous than Amazon (or any other corporation) could ever be?
You're moving the goalpost and still wrong [1]. I don't know why you want to talk about this so badly if you don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, as I said, it's discretionary regulation and power comes in many forms.
> The way to get rid of the Government would require bloodshed.
You don't need to get rid of "the government" if you control the state and everyone's minds via lobbying, corruption, propaganda and other means.
> Can we agree that that n corrupt and power-abusive Government is far more dangerous than Amazon (or any other corporation) could ever be?
Absolutely not. "The government" is the puppet, the owners of companies like Amazon are the puppeteers. Power comes in many forms. Coercion comes in many forms.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
(Also, let's not get into the fact that the news are about changes in Denmark and you are using an wikipedia link to argue about US Antitrust Law. The world does not spin around D.C)
So, yeah, we can drop the talk about monopolies.
> power comes in many forms.
I'm not arguing about power by itself. I'm arguing about how dangerous an institution can be if they abuse the power they do have. You and I might dislike all the data collecting from Amazon (and Google et caterva), but none of them can put me in jail. The Government can. And since you want to think of terms of American politics: think of all the abuses that were made in the name of "The War on Terror" and "The War of Drugs". Don't forget the Obama administration getting the IRS to go after Tea Party organizations.
Mind you, this is no way a defense of the corporations, and I already have an idea of how I would like to see people fighting the concentration of power [0]. But I find weird seeing people who understand how bad it can be when power gets too concentrated in the hands of a few, and yet they just want to put it all in the hands of the government, the one entity they have no recourse against. To me, those wishing to give the government more power than it already has shows a case of naivety at best and a serious authoritarian inclination at worst.
Let's generalize the question: what makes you uncomfortable about the government tracking all your (non-cash) purchases? They already know your income for tax purposes, and much of your large purchases, also for tax purposes. And if you need a pinch of stuff that's illegal, you're not going to swipe your debit card anyway. I suppose a court order will show all your bank operations history, should the government need it for lawful purposes.
So, if there's still anything left to preserve, we need to clearly articulated first, what that is.
They know that it's happening and don't like it, like how they won't like the Norweigan government's decision. But they'll likely put up little resistance and move on to other things.
You dont buy only food in supermarkets these days.
Citizen #83238201: You have exceeded your yearly purchasing quota for condoms and thrush medication. Please report to your nearest moral re-education camp.