Richard Posner, the famous U.S. judge and economics professor, has a book on the economics of privacy. We argue, rhetorically, that privacy is good for business, that privacy is good business, that when you go to Costco or anyplace else and they tell you up front what they're going to do with your personal information and then they do it.... They have a massive database at Costco of 50 million employees on a North American basis. Obviously they're treating them properly and are not doing untoward things with them--profiling or extra things that would be untoward or that they didn't say up front.
You see, if you're open and transparent about what personal information you're going to collect, use, disclose, retain, and store, then people will know, if you go to whatever kind of person you're dealing with or with the federal government, what's going to happen.