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Just Another Jim

Just Another Essay



Big Brother, Inc., Etc.

Essay Posted July 24, 2007 by James E. Nelson

Well, this story’s a bit scarey . . . in a family and elder-brother sort of way.

Sometime in the last two weeks (probably when I was out and about on a business trip for several days), my credit card information was stolen. Friday evening I received a call from my credit card company asking if a $2,522.93 charge from the Brazilian company “Novo Mundo” was a legitimate charge. We had a bad phone connection and the operator had a nearly indecipherable accent, so I told her I would check my records and call back.

When I called back a few hours later I was informed (after they determined “I” was really “me”) that five more Brazilian charges, all for more than $1,000 and all from different companies, had come in. Because the card was on hold, they rejected all the charges, and I won’t be responsible for any fraudulent charges.

Now let me note that this is not the scarey part of the story. Using a credit card online is remarkably safe because of the very complex privacy system involved in the “secure server” system on the Internet. But when traveling, you physically hand your credit card over to waiters and clerks, who disappear into back rooms with the thing. This system is so insecure and open to fraud that I figure it’s not “if” your credit card will get fraudulently used by someone else, but “when.” At least if you travel very much. So this turn of events, while disconcerting and very inconvenient, was not a huge shock.

But back to the credit card. As I said above, since we had a bad connection I called them back. But since I was calling them instead them calling me, they had to confirm my identity. I figured it would be the standard three or four questions: mother’s maiden name (or security question of my choice), last four digits on the card, social security number, and pin . . . or something along that line.

Boy, was I wrong. I am relatively new with this credit card company. Long ago, in a world far away (the 1980s I believe) I had a Chevy Chase Bank Visa Card (unrelated to Chase Manhattan, by the way—Chevy Chase Bank is in Chevy Chase, MD). The card was recommended as one of the top credit cards in the market by Consumer Reports, and I signed up.

But eventually Chevy Chase Bank was purchased by another Maryland bank, which was purchased by another bank, which was taken over by a bank holding company, which was split into its constituent parts and sold off as derivatives, or some other esoteric financial vehicles by someone in the school of Michael Milkin’s voodoo financing . . .

To make a long story short. My card was eventually sold to a national credit card company that had the reputation of having the worst customer information security in the national credit card business. My Chevy Chase Bank Visa Card had morphed into a monster!

So I cancelled the card just a few years ago (which is unbelievably hard to do!) and got a card that was very highly regarded by Gomez at the time (the internet world version of Consumer Reports). Of course, that company has also been through a corporate merger, so the credit card merry-go-round continues.

. . . but back to my telephone call about the fraudulent charges . . .

For security reasons I had to tell them the color of the car I owned about ten years ago. (Before I had this credit card. How do they know these things?) I had to verify addresses (through multiple choice questions) of several previous places where I had lived, again long before I ever had this card. I had to tell them from which state my social security card had been issued. And then there was various and sundry family information.

They even asked what my son had to eat when he went to Burger King last Thursday! (Well actually, it didn't happen quite like that. As the Geico Gecko said, “That's a complete dramatization, of course, but you get the point.”)

A few months ago my brother was trying to figure where we had lived and when as a family growing up. Our family didn’t agree on the places and timeline. I think we finally got it all figured out, but I suspect there is a certain nagging doubt among some of my family whether that order of events is recorded accurately.

I think my brother should call my credit card company. They will no doubt be able to give him all those details, as well as whether mom cooked rice or macaroni and cheese with stewed tomatoes for lunch on the Thursday after midterms my sophomore year in high school.

George Orwell got it all wrong. It’s not the government that keeps an eye on us, it’s the corporate world. Since 1984 we’ve learned that governments are remarkably inept at doing anything big-brotherish. Their best intentions at creating a big brother sort of society generally get reduced to having us take off our shoes before we get onto an airplane and forcing us to give the bank two picture i.d.’s, our social security card, and a utility bill before they will allow us to open up a savings account.

And it turns out that’s not half the story. My credit card company customer service advisor whispered to me that “George Orwell” isn’t even his real name! He’s actually Eric Arthur Blair, and in 1945 Eric drove a black car he nicknamed . . . (hold it, I better not give you that information. My credit card company said it’s secret.)

So there you have it. The credit card companies (and probably Google, but I’ll have to ask my credit card company customer service advisor to find out if Google also knows everything or not) know everything about us. And at some level, that’s scarey. It’s a slight twist on Eric Arthur Blair’s (a.k.a. George Orwell’s) original thesis. The truth is, “Big Brother” is actually “Big Brother, Inc.”

But while it’s scarey, I wonder how big a problem it actually is.

Back in the day (pretty much before my time), everybody knew everyone, except in the cities. And even in the cities, neighborhoods were a lot like small towns across the rest of America. But then we got air conditioning, television, and electric garage door openers. A bit later we got Hispanics to mow our lawns and trim our hedges. Once we dropped out of Kiwanis Club, Thursday Night Bowling, and turned the lawn work over to the foreigners, no one knew anybody anymore.

If I wanted to buy a car on credit, no one had the slightest idea who I was. Credit checks became a strange caricature of the community our society once knew. The more the alienation and anomie increased, the more important it was that someone trustworthy could identify us.

You and I moved away from family and neighbors and what we got in return is Citibank and Wachovia watching our back and calling every Wednesday night at dinner to shoot the breeze and see if everything was going all right.

It seems we should be a lot more bent out of shape about losing our neighbors and forgetting who we were than we are about getting a new corporate big brother to look after us.

After all, everyone needs someone around who can remember what color the car was back in 1992. It’s the little details, after all, that make life interesting. Although it still bothers me that it’s some faceless office worker in Mumbai, India with a thick accent keeping all of those details straight for me, instead of Joe, who lives two doors down in the brown house. But I guess in the end, it’s good to be part of the family.