Benny and DingerX --

Spying is one thing. Trading information is another.

I visit the NY Times and Washington Post websites and they know every click I make, not just every story I open but every one I follow through 5 jumps (Dan Froomkin's daily White House Watch).

If they didn't use this information to decide which stories get the most (and longest) play on their website, they'd be fools. And this is much higher-quality feedback than they've ever had before for their print product and what writers are really earning their bonuses.

I'm trading this type of information for access to the stories; it behooves them to know how to keep selling to their already-existing customers (which is a lot cheaper than getting new ones). (OK, I'm a "customer" because they're selling eyeballs to advertisers.)

In this piece, I actually wrote "what if [they] gave you" a tablet in exchange for this information.

Well, maybe this hypothetical frequent-flyer program would want more for $479 than just some locational information. But somewhere between $0 and $479 is a point at which I'll trade.

Right, I don't want to be spied upon. And like everyone I know, I don't want to be bombarded with intrusive advertising. Just because you know I'm in Chicago doesn't mean I want you to start sending me Chicago-based alerts.

But if I'm checking my web-based mail and all the ads on that page are for restaurants within 5 miles of where I'm sitting right then, I'm not going to complain. So maybe the frequent-flyer program is selling my GPS location (for the duration of the trip) to one of the ad brokers, who guarantees the advertisers that (A) I'm close and (B) I'm an out-of-towner and likely to be eating out. There's all kinds of ways for them to sell this information without compromising my anonymity.

And all I'm saying is that the computer-based GPS device like an internet tablet is lots better for this kind of focused marketing or info collecting than a phone.

Can the information be abused? Well, sure. But it doesn't have to be. We have to be alert. But we don't have to be paranoid. And for what it's worth, we live in a very commercial world.