In the name of convenience and safety, big business and big government keep pushing the boundaries of privacy and surveillance. Consider the latest from online retailer Amazon.com Inc. and the Super Bowl. Trusting businesses to protect privacy is always a risk, . . .
In the name of convenience and safety, big business and big government keep pushing the boundaries of privacy and surveillance. Consider the latest from online retailer Amazon.com Inc. and the Super Bowl. Trusting businesses to protect privacy is always a risk, because personal data is a valuable commodity. That's why I'm hesitant to take at face value a new Amazon service that looks quite useful -- and which, at least for now, is sensitive to privacy concerns, more so than many other e-commerce sites I can name.

On Tuesday, the company announced the ``Honor System'' -- a method for making payments to Web sites, either as voluntary contributions or payments for services or information. The Amazon service is similar in some respects to services such as PayPal (https://www.paypal.com/us/home), providing a way to make small payments conveniently.

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