BUREAU: Watches out for consumers

Dear Senator Crapo, I wonder about all this data collecting stuff too. Seems to be the new American business model.

Truth is Mike, your personal information and mine is up for sale…all of it…and anything goes. But dollars to doughnuts, they might be more interested in your locations and purchasing power than mine but I could be wrong.

Some big government agencies and some global corporations are kinda tied at the hip. Take Amazon Web services. They are in a legal battle with IBM over access and control of our info. According to the Wall Street Journal on July 24 headlined “Amazon asks the court to approve a CIA contract,” Amazon wants the court to move forward with a four-year, $600 million cloud computing contract that they signed quite a while ago. May not sound like much but these entities are worth billions with all their other cloud contracts with businesses, government, military etc. — all over the world. Well, this is just business and big money has led us here. Just do what they want and they won’t use your information against you.

So maybe Richard Cordray of the Federal Consumer Protection Bureau is here to protect us from unscrupulous business practices and other entities. We have seen too much corruption with no accountability. We always need counterbalances to these excesses. Please don’t discount this Bureau; you might need them someday.

DIAN KOEFOD

Coeur d’Alene