Big Brother has been swiping your credit-card data, every time you swipe.
The National Security Administration (NSA), which is already monitoring your cell phone and your Web browsing, is also watching each time a person charges a purchase, according to credit-card industry observers.
And it is building up a database on your spending habits. One longtime payments analyst says it has been doing so for at least a quarter-century.
“I personally know that the federal government has been doing this in criminal matters for as long as I have been in the business,” says Madeline Aufseeser, a senior payments analyst for securities-industry consultant Aite Group who has 25 years’ experience.
“After 9/11, I know of a federal agency looking to track down terrorists getting lots of information from a credit card processor,” she adds.
The tracking currently details the category and the purchase price, but not the item itself, according to LowCards.com, a website that follows the credit-card industry.
However, if the federal government wants to investigate a transaction further, it has legal options available to do so, added LowCards.com.
Aufseeser says she’s not sure exactly when credit-card tracking by the feds began.
However, she knows that big credit associations, such as Visa and MasterCard (each of which has large credit-fraud detection units) are always willing to cooperate with the federal government.
Rosetta Jones, a spokeswoman for Visa, declined comment, as did representatives for several other credit-card industry players.
So, is the compiling of card purchase information of millions of Americans by the US government a healthy thing?
“I don’t know; it’s a good thing, [and] it’s a bad thing” is the viewpoint of Bill Hardekopf, chief executive officer of LowCards.com.
“It’s agood thing in that tracking card purchases could help in identifying cells that are buying certain materials for a bomb,” Hardekopf explains.
Nevertheless, Hardekopf also says that the government accumulates so much card information that it could start using it in the wrong ways.
“We could be talking about the government gathering information on people who aren’t threats to the president but merely oppose him politically,” he adds.
However, for Aufseeser and others in the card industry, there is no question about the benefits: “It’s a good thing,” she says, “because these efforts are reducing fraud. And that lowers the costs of running these cards.
“And with lower costs,” she adds, “these companies can offer users better deals.”