This bird has too be kidding right?

Why do ya all head down too the Federal Court in Sydney on the 28th March, 2008 and see what info technology abuses have done.

It's public record ... from Google of course ... who else.

David asks?

The question is, are consumers ultimately paying for credit cards, credit unions, and online banking etc with their privacy (credit transaction records, datamining, credit rating etc)? And what is the role of the government in all this?

Yes David they are ..... and you would all be surprised just to find out how.

Anyway ... 28th March .. Federal Court Sydney ... be there or be square ...

Federal Politicians of all persuasions are to be congratulated for their efforts in stopping Australia having the equivalent of an Australia Card. We should especially acknowledge the great work of the Democrats. This has been an example of our system working well. The overwhelming "administrative" tendency is for organisations - (with all the best intentions) - to create a single identifier for each person. The Access Card was (is) a not so subtle attempt for this goal to be realised.

The critical fact that many politicians understand is that we MUST not have a single repository of information about a person because that leads to unnecessary control and surveillance. A centralised database is an inevitable emergent property of a system with a single identifier for a person.

It turns out that a single repository of information about everyone would be an efficiency nightmare. The shelving of the Access Card is great news for the efficient operation of our country. Our electronic systems now enable us to identify ourselves with voice, photographs, video, iris scans, etc. whenever needed. It turns out that this sort of identification is rarely needed in practice but when needed can today be efficiently supplied. It also turns out that our David Jones Card is sufficient for our David Jones transactions, Medicare Card for medicare etc.

Once again a pat on the back to our politicians from all sides of the political spectrum for looking after the interests of their electorates.

I note from JOJO's comments above that maybe he or she knows more about what is going on than we "as normal people" do, as regards to our privacy in the world of e-commerce.

My question being, "Who in big brother land" is checking the checkers who are supposedly responsible for placing relevant info on our Credit Files?

A classic example being how hard it is for people to remove a bad listing on their Credit Report when it shouldn't have been listed in the first place.