Reply #25: While I do not think that we are even close to a police state, I do agree with WarrenStupiditiy

[Gormy Cuss]

that people accept a hundred little invasions of privacy now that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. It troubles me that it's a social conditioning to lower the expectation of the right to be let alone, as Justice Brandeis phrased it. We have stopped questioning it when private companies do it, and if we have a government try to impose similar restrictions we may be less inclined to see the problem with that too. That's where the comparison to Rosa Parks and "papers, please" moments come into consideration -- not that this itty bitty anecdote on a blog is a civil rights violation, but the projection that accepting such minor intrusions sets the stage for accepting later, larger ones by government.

The fact is the receipt check is voluntary and by most accounts from the industry it's NOT about catching customers shoplifting but about catching cashier error and fraud. The guy who said no may be an asshole but he wasn't an asshole simply for declining, and it's somewhat frightening to me how quickly so many people dismissed the whole event because they said essentially that it was his own fault for not going along with the store's request.