now the city is charging a 5 current fee for each bag issued at the checkout line, whether paper or plasticris continue fisher hit the streets to see how that's sitting with shoppers. >> reporter: six plastic shopping bags. cost him 30 cents on his trip to safe way, and he's not happy. >> it is only 30 cents, but it is the idea. >> got nickel out of me, asked me if i want a bag. i said sure. they said you have to pay 5 cents for each bag. i said in that case, forget bagging the milk and the oranges and i'll take one bag. >> >> reporter: shoppers got a bargain. >> we are bagging in reusable bag at no cost to you. >> reporter: one week they are giving out reusable shopping bags to ease customers into the new law charging 5 cents for every paper or plastic bag. >> this is driven to clean up the environment, teach people to reuse, recycle. >> reporter: part of the funds collected for the fee go to cleaning up the river. >> that's a good thing for the community and the environment. >> i think it is a bit of a pain, but it is a good thing. >> reporter: other shoppers aren't sold. >> i was appalle

finance its entitlement programs and it's a kind of sales tax, but instead of being collected all at checkout it's collected a little bit at a time in the whole production distribution stream. and it's proven in other countries to be a very, very effective tax, raise as lot of revenue at very little economic decision portion, and i think we're going to have to do it whether we like it or not. host: any supporters of that on capitol hill? guest: none, none. at least none publicly. i periodically meet with members of congress who say, i'm absolutely right, but but if you go around and say that i agreed with you, i'll call you a liar to your face. so there's a deep, deep fear about saying anything about these things that i think is very, very harmful because we need to at least have open debate and not have certain subjects that were -- that we're not allowed to discuss because it upsets somebody or another. i think the policy community in this city has really fallen down on the job by pandering to crackpot ideas like, you know, all tax cuts raise revenue and silly things like that or that tax c

an e-mail alert so you know when you get close and don't have those embarrassing moments at the checkoutu have an option, either opt in or opt out of this program. if you opt in, what does that mean? >> that's correct. you have a choice. and you can choose to pay that over limit fee, or if you don't opt in, chen you take the risk that your credit card will be rejected. it will be better if you can stay under that credit limit and not have the problem. >> yeah, because that'll hurt your credit rating, might reduce your limit and such and so. another part of this is, you know, they're making a lot of money on these fees, aren't they? i was reading one of the articles from "the wall street journal," alluding to a report that said over $23 billion in '09, they made $18 billion in '08. this is also a big revenue stream for them. >> it's huge and hugely important, so one of the things you'll be seeing is all kinds of new fees. one thing i heard from readers about dollar a month fees to get a paper statement from some retail cards like anntaylor. people are raising balance transfer fees, raisin

but instead of being: did all of the checkout comments collected a little bit at a time in the whole production distribution stream and it's proven in other countries to be a very effective tax, raises a lot of revenue at very little economic distortion. and i think are going to have to do it whether we like it or not. >> host: many supporters of that on capitol hill? >> guest: no, none. at least not publicly. i periodically meet with members of congress that same absolutely right, but if you go around and say that i agree with you i'll call you a liar to your face. so there's a deep, deep fear about saying anything about these things that i think is very, very harmful because we need to at least have open debate and not have certain subjects that we are not allowed to discuss because it upsets somebody

shopping patterns and, you know, the giant car, every once you have a giant car when you go to the checkout counter there's a reason the eckert getting data on use of they can have the shelves stocked with the food you want. it's making it easier for you now you don't have to go to the grocery store two or three times, you might get everything you want with one trip to the first restore. that is possible because of the data that is being aggregated, so we have to be careful when we say there's too much of recent being gathered if we want to make stuff more efficient and easier and economically cheaper for companies to do business we have to take this into account. who should have access to these databases is one of the other questions posed to us. greg will second me with this when you do cybercrime investigations the hardest challenge you have as attribution. how do you confirm the person who launched the amount where is in fact a guy sitting on fifth up in manhattan on the west side how do you do that and so at tradition is the biggest challenge. we have got to using multiple, we have to