Two senior store officers pleaded guilty to operating a scheme in which customers with out-of-state addresses could have their purchases recorded as being mailed to them.
Yet we know the government has used section 215 to collect purchase records of explosives precursors.
Ms. Danly said this approach can spare users the need to record serial numbers and purchase records.
Kenneth Starr got the ball rolling in 1998 when he subpoenaed Monica Lewinsky's book purchase records from two Washington bookstores.
One of the earlier outings, in the French Suites, is now replicated in a recording on Purchase Records, available from Purchase College of the State University of New York.
Correction: April 15 , 2001 Sunday An article last Sunday about disputes over the privacy of consumers' book purchase records misidentified Kramerbooks & afterwords, in Washington, where Monica Lewinsky's records were subpoenaed.
Judy Kay Moore, a Lilly spokeswoman, said that discrepancies in pharmacy purchase records were not unusual, so the company had no reason to think criminal activity was involved.
In a dangerous effort to appease the extremist gun lobby, Mr. Ashcroft has reversed standard F.B.I. procedures so that gun purchase records of suspected terrorists must be kept secret.
Professor Kalra was co-author of a 2009 article published in the Journal of Consumer Research that examined purchase records from the electronics department of an unidentified retailer.
In 2006, federal prosecutors subpoenaed the company for the purchase records of 24,000 customers as part of a grand jury probe in a tax-evasion case; in 2010, the North Carolina Department of Revenue requested the records of 50m customers – a staggeringly broad request.
