What Kind of Privacy Rules and Regulations Apply to Retail Transactions?

Let's say you buy something from a store. I think we're all clear on things like, hey, store, you are supposed to protect my credit card information from hackers. But what other requirements/limitations apply to a merchant?

Depends on where you are!

Linkage to follow, expect updates:

https://www.privacyrights.org/what-personal-information-should-you-give-merchants

Visa and MC really don't want the customer slowed down or pissed off. They have rules preventing merchants from requiring additional ID for purchases as part of the regular process. Returns, by contrast, _can_ require state ID.

Basically, everything people did when you used to pay by check seems to be Not Allowed, and maybe that's part of why no one takes checks any more. However, this isn't necessarily the kind of privacy rules I was looking for.

There's this:

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/how-comply-privacy-consumer-financial-information-rule-gramm

But that's more about borrowing/lending/etc. financial institution stuff, not going out and buying something from a store, or buying something from an online shop that is then mailed to you.

Another way to think about this is not a right to privacy but a right to control publicity associated with one's name.

http://www.wvgazettemail.com/News/201206120220

Chuck Yeager sued a wireless company for using his name in a press release and won (I have no idea what happened on appeal, and honestly, the amount won didn't look like it justified the effort put into the suit), and also sued Virgin America for something similar.

This is a law firm warning you that this kind of thing can happen:

http://www.scottandscottllp.com/main/Use_of_Names_Without_Permission_Can_Be_Costly.aspx

They mention this lawsuit, which was settled:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-michael-jordan-jewel-dominicks-settlement-met-20151122-story.html

It's unclear what the total was from that, but there was a lot of money from a related case, that he then donated:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-michael-jordan-charity-1216-biz-20151215-story.html

However, all the right to publicity laws are, er, trumped by first amendment rights. So while a shop that said this:

"Famalicious McCelebrity Shopped at FunFunSexyTimes!!!!! Order Your Sex Toy from FunFunSexyTimes Today!!!"

would probably lose in court should Famalicious McCelebrity choose to sue FunFunSexyTimes, I suspect that "Hey, It Is Political Speech And Thus Protected", if what FunFunSexyTimes said was actually this:

"Famalicious McCelebrity Shopped at Our Store and We Donated the Proceeds to support SomeCauseOrOther".

Especially if there was any reason to believe that Famalicious McCelebrity opposed SomeCauseOrOther.

I am trying to figure out what I think of all this. But the fact that this is not something that generally arises is all by itself kind of interesting. I mean, we've had lawsuits about whether the guv'mint can take a gander at your library record and what kind of warrant they need to do so. There's all kinds of stuff that stores can't ask the purchaser for. But boy, if the store knows who you are, and they are not actually trying to make money off you in an apolitical way -- like, if they wanted to share with the general public your shoe size or how you liked your burger prepared or that you really hate coleslaw -- there's really not much stopping them.

If you find evidence to the contrary, please share! I'll probably retain some interest in this for a while.

Big statistical analysis of ADHD/ODD/CD and ASD

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4006222/

I really think that a lot of our approach to identifying people who need support would work better if we focused on smaller-than-diagnostic modules (such as social interaction problems), rather than characteristic clusters (like ADHD or ODD or ASD or whatever). This particular analysis seems to share that way of thinking about kids who need support.

I've been really wondering a lot about the overlap between ASD and ODD for years now, especially as we have tried to have playdates with kids with the same diagnosis as my kids, but a very different range of symptoms. I had convos back when A. was doing EI with therapists who said that some parents diagnosis shop, which I just wasn't sure whether I really believed that was a full explanation or not (really, are all these high energy, high conflict kids with ASD diagnoses actually ODD instead? Because they sure set off my ASD-dar for the rest of the package: social interaction issues, sensory problems, narrow areas of deep interest, etc.). I try not to blame parents (because I don't want to be blamed, either!), and I sure recognize that when a parent has needs that aren't met, that is going to limit how much the parent can then do for their child. Part of why we work with a play therapist is because I recognize my limitations at helping kids solve relationship problems in a play context without either creating high structure or making the situation worse in some other way (neither of which gets at the thing I want my kids to be better at than I am, which is being able to relate well to other people and share goals and cooperate and All That Good, Prosocial Stuff).

I'm starting to think that maybe ODD actually starts out as what I think of as Grumpy Old Man Syndrome. You say, hey, let's do X. GOM says, NO! If you wait a few minutes, GOM will say, hey, I have an idea. Let's do X! Annoying as fuck, but manageable, if you can avoid engaging with the initial no. If you make the mistake of trying to convince GOM to do X, GOM will escalate and entrench, until GOM is saying that X will kill the kiddies, give us all cancer and directly start Armageddon within his limited remaining lifetime. Also, cost too much money. A parent that doesn't have GOM, and who figures out early on to wait, and maybe do some environmental nudging towards X, and doesn't require the GOM to admit it was actually the parent's idea, etc. etc. etc. can take a kid with GOM and produce an adult who may be a little annoying at times (especially when tired or surprised out of their routine), but is basically functional. A parent who has severe GOM themselves may wind up making an adult with severe GOM, aka, ODD. Assuming they don't just kill each other when the kid hits puberty.

We tend to think, oh, let's fix the kids and then it'll be good in the next generation. And I'm like, yeah, that's probably never going to be good enough for things like really entrenched, multi-generational GOM. You are going to have to mitigate with the 'rents, if those kids are gonna have any chance at all.