:"Why would any consumer want a third party to get between themselves and the merchants they buy from? All the third party does is aggregate and sell purchase information."

You may live in a fantasy world utopia, but those of us that live in the USA,Canada, and Europe have that third party shoved right in there all the time.

If you use anything but Cash, you are paying someone to use your plastic card. and most people use the plastic card and do not carry cash. It's exactly how the banks planned it.

He got ahold of it by using a square reader. It's not hard, but it's also not "DANGEROUS"

I am guessing you dont know how most card readers work. It's the exact same thing. the audio level signal from the reader head is sent to the chip to decode. All card readers have worked like this for decades.

they bought a junk one. Square can charge and swipe at the same time.

Duh, Did I say Rsync was a backup?

I still had my keyfob and my SecurID for logins. They never wanted them back. I use the SecurID for Paypal now.

Minor correction - the first supersonic airliner was Russian, the Tu-144.

Free speech is a concept, the first amendment is what involves your government. In this case, it's the concept that is under threat.

Ahh, Free Speech only means something when you agree with its usage, eh?

Security audit? what is that? Is that like those mythical Pay raises I hear that used to happen?

I have not worked at Comcast for 5 years. I handed a friend my keyfob access card that still works there because he lost his and wanted a replacement. He was going to have security reprogram the system to use it for his access.

Mine Still WORKED! Which is scary as it had All access clearance at multiple locations, 5 Freaking years and they never removed me nor did a security audit to remove users.

I did not know that EA had a programming office in Inglewood, CA. and you got to sleep near rattlesnakes? Were you a lead on a project? The rest of us had to sleep WITH the rattlesnakes.