I picked up this from Yahoo news and I think we all might want to take a look at this. I posted as a comment but don’t know how many will see that comment and I think this is serious enough to warrent a diary.
link
Update: Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley is pushing the bill.
Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd’s 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America’s small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill’s managers without debate this week, would require the nation’s payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government.
Call Congress and Tell Them to Oppose The eBay Reporting Provision in the Housing Bill: 1-866-928-3035FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey commented: “This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay’s PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America’s small businesses are breathtaking.”
snip
Payment Card and Third Party Network Information Reporting. The proposal requires information reporting on payment card and third party network transactions. Payment settlement entities, including merchant acquiring banks and third party settlement organizations, or third party payment facilitators acting on their behalf, will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee. Reportable transactions include any payment card transaction and any third party network transaction. Participating payees include persons who accept a payment card as payment and third party networks who accept payment from a third party settlement organization in settlement of transactions.
So folks, I think we better pay attention to this one or we are going to be in a world of hurt with even more of our privacy taken away from us. This will make the spying with telecoms look like small potatoes. I wonder what else is in this bill and what chance it has of passing.
By the way, hi everyone, hope all are in good health and happy.
A lot of people have made a few extra bucks by selling odds and ends on ebay. With this legislation, this tiny segment of the economy will have IRS oversight while vast sums continue to roll into oil company coffers.
Well it doesn’t seem to be limited to just ebay or amazon, paypal, but rather all credit card transactions, to be compiled and turned over to the government. At least that is my reading of the full article.
this from the article:
It was just an observation, I see that much more is contemplated here.
I’m sure history will show, that we are in the start of a new type of holocaust, they just hav’nt torched the pit yet.
The Have’s & Have not’s….they’re going to put a whole new spin on slavery..
IF (the biggest two letter word in the dictionary) we let them ; )
Yeah there is that great big IF, and IF we don’t we have no one to blame, do we?
How are you doing Infidel, I hope well and happy.
thanks diane, I’m still fighting the battle, ; )
good to see ya back around, and hope the same for you
peace
information & financial information that would be! Who on EARTH would want to steal, harvest, and massively profit from THAT!? Naaaah, no one nefarious would want THAT!
What a horrid, horrid idea.
Exactly, you know the ramifications of this as just horrendous, this is a road I do not think we had better even start to go down. I don’t want to hear well we can fix this when Ob is pres. Yes sure. Bring up and even bigger question of what is exactly in these bills and how many in congress even know what they are voting on in all the details with the size of these bills. 600 pages for this one and that is relatively small.
I think we need to throw the whole bunch out and start over. There are very few that I’d want to keep.
The irony is that the housing bill will not even help many homeowners and then to have this bit inserted.
Unfortunately this information already has been being gathered for years. This insert into the bill is just to try to make it legal now. It started out as business wanting to track your spending habits so they would better know how to target their advertising to you. . .who knows where it has expanded to. I’m sure we can all let our imaginations roam and probably not even then have the real scope of it.
Hi Diane. Nice to see you out and about.
Shirl
Actually I don’t think this has been done in this form as outlined in the bill. There has been collecting but not at this level and not at the level of transactions in your credit cards a/c and purchases on ebaby and so on, that is by the federal government.
This is one of those fun times that I disagree with you Diane. It’s been done for a long time now. . .ebay and credit cards and paypal and everywhere. . . However, I don’t have my proof available so I will defer to you.
Smiles and giggles
Shirl
Well, pardon my old failing eyes. LOL!
Yes it is new that the feds will require businesses to report such things to them. Guess it’s getting to tough for them to keep track of it all.
I bow to your superior reporting.
Keep smilin’ kiddo
Shirl
because I won’t pay my bills online and do very little shopping online although it would be easier. I want to habg on to the last of my privacy for as long as possible.
This information has been collected for years. It is proprietary information but I believe it is sold, or finds its way, into the investor community, etc. It’s not personalized. It simply shows the sales amount, date, time, and merchant. The merchant type is the information investors/finance people/economists want.
It can be very useful information. It tells us what is happening in the economy. For instance, we know that Americans are cutting back on their spending at restaurants and gas stations. We know that they are buying computers still. We also know consumers are buying “inferior goods”. When our economy is almost 70% based on consumer spending it’s important to have this information. And I would rather have it given to the government and passed on to all of us rather than allow a few companies to be able to control it.
Of course, there are still privacy concerns and there are other laws that allow the government to get individualized information for purposes of criminal investigation. That has been weakened over the last few years and I would rather see a return to the strict warrant requirement of the 4th Amendment.
But this bill has more to do with the economic aspect of this data. As far as I can tell anyway.
I’m more concerned there will be a bailout for homebuilder companies in this bill and other bailouts. There was originally about 15 Billion in there for homebuilder bailouts but I think Bush has beaten back that giveaway (probably one of the 2 or 3 issues I agree with Bush on).