I think many people would disagree. It might be legal, but that doesn't mean it's not unethical.
If a stranger on the street started following me, taking pictures without permission, and taking notes about my appearance of actions and storing it in their database, I would say he was behaving unethically.
Ask street photographers - it's a delicate balance. Many people really dislike having their pictures taken without their permission.
How does this compare to the pre-automation practice mentioned above of cashiers manually making a tally of how many men/women of each age group were visiting?
I mean, this is literally the "global village" coming to fruition. The online shopkeeper knows you just as well as a shopkeeper in a real village - it knows who you are, it remembers all your previous visits, it knows your hobbies (even if you didn't tell him about them, but someone else in the village), it can make suggestions based on that.
When you buy flowers, the village shopkeeper knows not only who's buying them, but also has a good idea for whom these flowers are intended. That's where we're heading.
This is the level of (non)privacy that we historically had, living in much smaller communities than modern cities. The trend of more anonymity brought by urbanization is reversing, but it's not something new or horrible, if anything, the possibility of being just another face in the crowd is an anomaly that existed for a (historically) short time and is slowly coming to an end once more.
That is a lot of words to simply say that some people think it is unethical. Which is an essentially empty statement. Couldn't you at least say most people and make it an argumentum ad populum?
lawful and ethical are two totally different things. They are both related but are mutually exclusive of each other
ethical != opinion
Ethical has weight and you can lose your job, and even go to jail for being unethical. RMS actually has a very strong academic ethical mind (Even though I disagree with him more then agree). BUT ethics isn't easily defined.
If a stranger on the street started following me, taking pictures without permission, and taking notes about my appearance of actions and storing it in their database, I would say he was behaving unethically.
Ask street photographers - it's a delicate balance. Many people really dislike having their pictures taken without their permission.