FTC forces Sears, Kmart out of the spyware business

"Under the settlement (PDF) with the FTC, Sears has now agreed to destroy all data gained from the experiment and stop collecting data from any software still running in the wild. In addition, if it wants to do any tracking in the future, the company has committed to "clearly and prominently disclose the types of data the software will monitor, record, or transmit. This disclosure must be made prior to installation and separate from any user license agreement. Sears must also disclose whether any of the data will be used by a third party."

The thing that bothers me about this whole thing is that any company can do whatever they want and in the end the worst that can happen is that they have to destroy and not repeat it.

What I want to know is:

1. Why did they think that pulling data from participants' secure shopping carts was a good idea?

2. Why did they even need to look at participants' webmail information?

3. Why did anyone at Sears/K-Mart think that this was a good idea at all?

Pulling all of that extra customer data increases their business risk. If that information was to leak somehow and damage a customer financially it would be bad legally and publicity-wise for both companies. And let's face it, K-Mart and Sears don't exactly need bad publicity at this point in the game.

Even with all that data, they still suck at marketing.