So you think the grocery store is out to steal your soul? A little high tech voo-doo? Maybe they'll ship your information to jack-booted-thugs like me. I'll see that you're buying rolling papers and sandwich bags and, armed with the grocery store database, I'll get a search warrant and come kick in your door in the middle of the night.

So many potential victims of government abuse, so little time.

I had a drug gang put a price on my head. I caught one of the little buggers at a motel room with his teen-age girlfriend and a bunch of heroin. He went to jail, but do you think he'd tell me where he really lived? He had a Safeway card. Forsooth, thought I, maybe like me he failed to follow Gargoyle's advice and gave his real address when he got the card.

To my own local Safeway I go. I speak to the manager, and tell her I caught a drug dealer with a Safeway card. How do I find out what his information is? Much of it could be useful to me in my role as government spy, and I can get the district attorney to issue a subpoena. Well, call our local corporate headquarters, she says. So I call the local headquarters, and ask them where I need to fax the subpoena. They refer me to the regional headquarters. Regional headquarters refers me to the national headquarters. National headquarters refers me to their security division. The security folks refer me to their legal department. The legal department refers me back to the security division, who send me back to the legal department. Finally somebody admits that they don't want to help me out because customers are paranoid about the cards in the first place. The last person I had the patience to speak to told me, in so many words, they intended to keep giving me the run-around.

That drug gang could kill me till I'm dead, before Safeway would give up the information.

And you folks think they're gonna steal your souls?

I think most paranoia is chemically induced.