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The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

389 points by _-david-_ 5y ago

jdhn 5y ago
I'm curious what the overall take will be on this. Normally, this action would be frowned upon if it was a private company, but I'm assuming that people may be more open to it being done by Treasury because it's "for the societal good".
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Funny, I assume the exact opposite. I'm guessing many people oppose government data collection but because they are buying data on the open market from people who "opt in", they're okay with it. I wish there was the ability to make a poll: * This is fine, privacy is dead. * This is okay because of private companies collecting and selling the data, even to the government * This is okay because the government is using this data to enforce laws I believe in, even though it rewards private data merchants. * Everyone involved is evil, the contracts should be voided and the companies dissolved.
  - dr-detroit 5y ago
    If you want to politicize any issue at all it must become a zero sum prisoners dilemma where I enjoy the benefits and the dreaded "other" is annihilated.
  - Cycl0ps 5y ago
    https://strawpoll.com/a584xf5re https://strawpoll.com/a584xf5re
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - derekjdanserl 5y ago
      [flagged]
      - getcrunk 5y ago
        I mean the available options kinda forces that.
        handrous 5y ago
        I, for one, liked the options, and happily chose "Everyone involved is evil, the contracts should be voided and the companies dissolved." I think middle age is turning me into some flavor anarchist. Weird.
      - dang 5y ago
        "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." There are two reasons why we have this guideline: (1) Supercilious putdowns of other people on the internet are among the lowest quality type of comment; and (2) Grandiose generalizations about the community are nearly always just the result of a few (or maybe just one) data points that the speaker didn't like. They're nearly all bogus, which is why people with opposite likes and dislikes express exactly the opposite general conclusions. Again, this is among the lowest quality type of comment. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22false%20feelings%20of%20generality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    There's also * The data collection is fine, but the government shouldn't be allowed to circumvent checks and balances by buying this data * The government using such data without warrant is fine, but it shouldn't be sold on the open market
    - fidesomnes 5y ago
      oh okay, stop it when you get a chance.
  - akamaka 5y ago
    * It’s much more urgent to address how private companies use the data, since we at least have some visibility into what the government is doing with it.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    Whether I think it's fine or not, privacy is dead.
  - ncallaway 5y ago
    Can we...can we have at least one "not okay" option that doesn't brand everyone involved as evil?
    - xerox13ster 5y ago
      If it's not okay, then everyone involved made a choice to be complicit in something that is "not okay". Willingly participating in harmful activities isn't evil?
      - dylan604 5y ago
        Only if you do it while twirling a mustache.
      - ncallaway 5y ago
        The action is evil, but I don’t think that makes the person evil. People are much more complex than a single choice. Second, while I might think the action is “not okay”, they might be reasoning from different principles, or different evidence than I am. Maybe, instead of being complicit in something I view as “not okay”, they have valid reasons to think it’s “okay”. I’m just not so willing to condemn every person with such a broad brush just because I disagree on this conclusion.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    this is bad because people who opt in think either that their data is not being sold to third parties or that the third party buying data is another company, nobody when opting in assumes that their data will be used in an investigation that can then lead to criminal charges.
  - quantified 5y ago
    We all committed privacy suicide when we bought smartphones. The data that we thought should be out of government hands, we put into the hands of many businesses. I agree it seems unsettling, but why can’t the government purchase information on the open market?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - nybble41 5y ago
      > … why can’t the government purchase information on the open market? The most obvious answer would be that they're spending our money in a way which is contrary to our interests. If it were their own funds, and they had no powers beyond those of any other private citizen or organization, that would be one thing. But they're supposed to be acting on our behalf, in our interests rather than their own, and to many people this does not qualify. Personally I would focus less on the fact that they've obtained this information and more on (a) the fact that this information is available on the market and (b) how they (and others) intend to use it.
      - quantified 5y ago
        That was the point I was inadequately trying to draw attention to also. Yes.
- leereeves 5y ago
  > but I'm assuming that people may be more open to it being done by Treasury because it's "for the societal good". Politics in America has become so hostile that people are now openly celebrating harm done to "the other side", so I don't doubt that there are people who will feel that way. But I suspect that most of them will feel quite differently when the White House is controlled by the other party.
- bragr 5y ago
  I don't have a problem with the government accessing the data per se. Given that the data exists and is commercially available, it would seem silly to tie their hands from accessing it. Police routinely run credit checks or just google people of interest to learn what is publicly known about them and I don't really have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that our privacy laws and culture are so lax that detailed location information has essentially become part of the public record of a person. It seems like one way or the other, governments will find avenues to get at that data if it exists, and if you don't want the government tracking people, better to cut the data off at the source.
- cma 5y ago
  Imagine the government wanted to know who "deepthroat" was during Watergate: just buy the location data of the journalists and anyone nearby.
  - pempem 5y ago
    And then they are violently removed from the populous like the single journalist who reported on the Panama Papers https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-panama-papers-journalist https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb...
    - SyzygistSix 5y ago
      That journalist published a lot of articles that exposed a lot of powerful people long before the Panama Papers.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  There is a reason the government is not allowed to buy this kind of data from telcos. What makes buying it from a professional surveillance group any different?
nostromo 5y ago
We need a Supreme Court ruling or law that says if the government doesn’t have a warrant to collect your data, they also can’t buy it from third parties. We also need privacy protections so these companies wouldn’t exist in the first place.
- closeparen 5y ago
  Almost all investigative work is asking people to share information that they don’t legally have to.
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    Interviewing a person is not "search and seizure"; the two things are categorically different.
    - tzs 5y ago
      So looking at all your comments so far, it appears that: 1. If Bob is selling data that he legally obtained about Alice and legally can sell, it is a search if the government buys that data from Bob, and 2. If the government interviews Bob and Bob gives them data about Alice, it is not a search. I'm failing to see the distinction you are making.
- austincheney 5y ago
  Why? I understand the subject is unpleasant but I don't see anything that remotely qualifies as legal over reach. Users must sign a consent statement to a terms of services agreement. That is a voluntary action where users erode their own privacy protections and surrender their contributions. Anything that happens later is completely incidental and solely between the data owner (which is not the user) and the third party.
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    Irrelevant to the 4th amendment. A service's TOS does not absolve the government of its constitutional prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure. Buying data from a 3rd party service is still a search and seizure, much like paying a hitman is still first-degree murder. The question is whether it is reasonable.
AlexandrB 5y ago
This is not a new take, but I think "the west" is effectively building their own version of China's social credit. It's just distributed among a range of private companies and accessed via subpoena or contract. The fact that the government doesn't operate most of it directly is largely irrelevant to those negatively affected by it and in some ways makes the situation worse (who do you even contact to correct inaccurate information?).
- wongarsu 5y ago
  Being able to correct inaccurate information is an often underappreciated but important part of the GDPR. It's also probably the biggest motivation why you have a right to ask any company what data they have stored about you: so you can spot mistakes in the data of rating agencies. The other use cases are more of a nice bonus.
  - Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
    While i completely agree that the right to correct data is an underappreciated aspect, the biggest motivation is the fundamental right to your own personal data. It motivates the more detailed ones like the right to know who processes your personal data, for what purpose, which data they have, and to correct that data. Not to forget the right to be informed and asked for consent. The "why" of these rights is not found in the robber barons wish to improve the quality of their data swamps. It is found in the wish of the european people to preserve their freedom in the digital age against surveillance capitalism and/or totalitarian governments. I can only hope our brothers and sisters worldwide will one day understand that and demand such a fundamental right as well.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  Wait until the US public finds out about the concept of a credit score (new in the 1980s).
  - mc32 5y ago
    Credit score for ghee most part tries to assure lenders you can repay your debts. Social credit score is about how close you hew to proscribed behavior at large.
shrubble 5y ago
Idea: get together some money, buy data of 100 of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Publish everything found, see if the laws are then changed...
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  They did that, twice. Panama and Pandora papers (2016, 2021). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_Papers
- darkwizard42 5y ago
  A good start, but their profiles are probably incredibly well scrubbed (or whatever is out there is already mitigated). Instead, collect it on every Congressperson and then see how fast things change. Most politicians don't have the means to scrub their backgrounds like multi-million dollar PR-vulnerable CEOs.
  - saganus 5y ago
    Seems more likely that those same Congresspersons (Congresspeople?) will try to stomp you out of existence, before making any changes to the law. I don't imagine people with such amount of power and connections to just roll over because "they caught us with the hand in the cookie jar!"
  - 0des 5y ago
    > A good start, but their profiles are probably incredibly well scrubbed (or whatever is out there is already mitigated). I have serious doubts about this.
  - freddie_mercury 5y ago
    Congresspeople are also all multimillionaires who are PR vulnerable. As of 2011, the average Senator had a net worth of $14 million and the average Representative had a net worth of $6.5 million. Presumably it has only gone up in the decade since, given the long bull market in everything. https://ballotpedia.org/Net_worth_of_United_States_Senators_and_Representatives https://ballotpedia.org/Net_worth_of_United_States_Senators_...
motohagiography 5y ago
If one sees the U.S. constitution and its amendments merely as dated conventions, there is no reason for the IRS and other agencies not to leverage tech to drive enforcement numbers, and for the agencies themselves to just become the policy levers they want to have. However, there are others who believe the rules are in place to prevent this precise type of eventuality, where a technological change shifts the balance of power and shreds any perception of a social contract, so you need rules that limit the scope and powers of government so it doesn't consume and enslave everything. I think a generation of people who believe the former statement have taken control of institutions, and we're watching it play out now. If you want to predict what this generation of bureaucracy will do, find the emergency exceptions and notwithstanding discretion to every law that protects the individual and limits the power of government, and then contrive the excuse that enables it, and this will be the policy and tactics of the people behind it. This Treasury collecting data story isn't about legalisms and principles, the people doing it really are nihilists, where language itself is just words that can mean anything, so it might as well mean whatever they want. Arguing under the false belief that principles and logic matters means doing nothing while they ratchet up controls and make themselves impossible to dislodge. You aren't going to persuade the Treasury or other people involved in these plays with reason, as the prospect of total, permanent, tech-facilitated dominion means the stakes are too high for them not to make a play for it. Only the courts, or sadly, conflict can dislodge it I think. We need to seriously consider how much tech is causing our governments to metastasize, and what the options for mitigating it are. There is no reason to believe your phone that tracks everything about you will not be used by people in government without accountability as leverage against you personally. This was paranoid ranting 20 years ago, and today it's just unpopular buzzkill. All that's left is to say "it was ever thus" and the only people who complained were the ones merely maladapted to the change and the inevitable progress of history.
- jasonfarnon 5y ago
  "I think a generation of people who believe the former statement have taken control of institutions" I think the cause and effect are backwards here. It is their having taken control of institutions that makes individuals less likely to take seriously the spirit of pesky constitutional protections. Which was of course foreseen by the founding fathers.
downWidOutaFite 5y ago
A lot of right vs left division is one side wanting to restrain corporations and the other side wanting to restrain government. Privacy concerns are one way to break through that divide when government and corporations unite.
smallerfish 5y ago
a) Both contracts are tiny ($150k each) although obviously these may be pilot programs. b) Finding evaders of sanctions seems like it should fall under a national security agency's purvue. We all take it for granted that the NSA could pinpoint our locations pretty easily, right? One thing that's particularly insane about the US government is how many departments have intelligence agencies. Obviously the ideal would be to have a small handful of well regulated intelligence agencies (emphasis on "well regulated", and you only have to look at the overreach by e.g. the CIA over the past 50 years to know that the US has had issues with that.) c) The tax evasion contract looks at social media posts to find tax evaders. I wouldn't be particularly upset if the IRS had their own internal tech department doing this - if you're going to have a tax agency, you want it to be able to prevent cheating, otherwise the tax system falls apart. Finding people who have declared themselves to have beaten the system in a public forum is a cheap and easy way to go after cheaters. There's a lot of pork in contracts that government agencies give out to private contractors, but this seems like a relatively low spend, and so it doesn't seem particularly bad that the IRS has decided that this is outside of their current expertise and given out a contract to chase it.
- Zak 5y ago
  > We all take it for granted that the NSA could pinpoint our locations pretty easily, right? In the same way we take it for granted that a SWAT team could kill any of us pretty easily. They have (and probably should have) the ability, but the authority to use it should be very limited and subject to stringent oversight.
  - smallerfish 5y ago
    No doubt. But, say that the NSA were given the purvue over enforcing sanctions (because they are the national security agency). Should they be able to monitor who is visiting the country with the sanctions? Sanctions are kind of like the tax agency situation - if you're going to wield them as a national security tool, then you want to be able to enforce them, otherwise they're relatively meaningless. And enforcing them necessarily involves watching to see if your country's citizens are evading them.
cabbagehead 5y ago
The pseudonymised ad data is just going to tell you the numbers of people travelling to sanctioned states. No big deal. There would be a story here if the government was re-identifying people, which would be a clear breach of the law. But there’s no evidence or suggestion of that happening, just “assume the worst of government” speculation. Poor journalism. As for looking at public social media posts for evidence of tax dodging, I’d hope that if someone was dumb enough to advertise this publicly, and everyone can see they are abusing other citizens out of funding for public services, the IRS should look into it.
austincheney 5y ago
It stands to reason that the government won't need a warrant to gather criminally admissible data from a service broker if it is voluntarily transferred to the government and the service broker forced its users to agree to a terms of service agreement. I also see lots of talk in the comments about a social credit and hiring potential. There are no restrictions on hiring software developers. As horrible as a social credit sounds at least its some kind of guardrails, where now there are none. In any system without constraints there is maximum potential for implicit bias.
cblconfederate 5y ago
At this point why not privatize the government? It will save the US billions of dollars in deals.
siruncledrew 5y ago
How much do you think this has to do with the government trying extra hard now to tax crypto?
cjcole 5y ago
It seems apparent that the US government is pursuing a novel strategy to route around the Bill of Rights: Steps: * Allow (and encourage) private sector monopolies to form * Use its leverage and influence to "encourage" those monopolies to do things which the US government is not allowed to do (examples: censorship, data collection) The list of First Amendment precedents, for example, with respect to the government is long and detailed. On the other hand, private companies operate under fewer restrictions and can act much more freely. So if we have a situation where there are a small number of monopolies and they, through personal relationships (marriage), lobbying, and the revolving door have a cozy relationship with the US government, then the government can effectively censor (for example) by more or less declaring "will no one rid me of these turbulent tweets" and have the monopolies jump to comply (or face increased risk of antitrust action for example). This is a win-win for both: the monopolies avoid antitrust and other unwanted regulation by playing ball, and the government gets to ignore the Bill of Rights by "outsourcing" actions to what are in effect de facto quasi-governmental entities. It's only a loss for the people for whom the Bill of Rights was written to protect.
- getcrunk 5y ago
  This is exactly what is happening. And afaict as far back as the 70's. Major isp's taking public funds, close relationship between nsa and Google
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  Kind of reminds me of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. The discretionary federal budget averages like 8% of the economy--that is an ungodly amount of economic resources that can be directed to private entities to accomplish basically anything the government wants to do, regardless of what the Constitution dictates.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
If this wasn't mentioned in "Dragnet Nation" (2014) it was at least (strongly) suggested. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragnet_Nation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragnet_Nation That is, once data is on the open market (including at dark web) then a gov acquiring it is a click or two away.
sroussey 5y ago
You should see the data they are buying on crypto related persons. 8-/
cromka 5y ago
Yeah, but GDPR is pain in the ass and all such, right?
literallyaduck 5y ago
Don't like it? Organizations like the EFF have been working to stop overreach: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/eff-fincen-stop-pushing-more-financial-surveillance https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/eff-fincen-stop-pushin... You can help financially, and contact each of your representatives and senators and request they act to stop this end run around the constitution.
- TeeMassive 5y ago
  Upvote for the EFF. They really are the heroes of digital time. And they stayed true to their mission amidst the woke wave other organizations have been swayed with.
  - boppo1 5y ago
    I gave them $100 and about a year later they saved youtube-dl. Soon as I'm actually making money again, they'll get some.
- dmead 5y ago
  Is this over reach? Seems like it would be good for the treasury to go after tax dodgers and money launderers.
  - mattrighetti 5y ago
    They have other means that won’t have an impact on everyone when it’s not necessary
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Destroying confidentiality of data on the net is a greater cost than getting small time tax evaders. The brunt of tax evasion is legal and fully a legislative issue.
- user3939382 5y ago
  I used to be a big EFF supporter until I learned they take millions in donations from the same organizations they’re supposed to be watching. Best case scenario it’s a massive conflict of interest, it’s a big problem for me that they find it to be ok.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
“ Critics of the software say it essentially allows the state to buy its way past the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans from unreasonable searches.” Interesting. Clearly data analysis can find all the tax dodgers, but is that an unreasonable search?
1cvmask 5y ago
Privacy invasion and surveillance is like invading countries a bipartisan issue. They always moan when one side uses government excesses against the "other" side but still vote for enhanced executive power and overreach all the time. The national security and surveillance state is as bipartisan as putting economic sanctions on poor Latin American countries, arming proxies, funding NGO fronts and bombing countries.
ineedasername 5y ago
Unfortunately, this isn't really the Fed's buying their way around the 4th amendment as the article states: it's people selling away their 4th amendment rights by giving their personal data & right to resell it to companies that will sell to anyone with the cash to buy it.
- Goety 5y ago
  Regulation could easily reverse the flow of data
  - dd36 5y ago
    We need an FCRA for data. We need the ability to rescind the data if it’s a third-party.
- storyinmemo 5y ago
  As I understand it, that's not quite true. I can't get a phone provider that won't pen register my data off. It's not an option and it's entirely not practical to conduct life without a phone of some kind.
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    Telco data is actually specifically protected specifically for this reason. It’s immune from third party doctrine, which is the whole, “the govt can ask someone else who has your data for it.” Not sure how that exception is being handled in the Treasury case.
  - LogonType10 5y ago
    Mint mobile. Buy the SIM card with cash. People say they want privacy, but people say a lot of things they don't mean. Instead I look at their actions. No one's willing to inconvenience themselves even slightly for privacy.
    - stemlord 5y ago
      I just spent the last couple days on a business trip, trying to do dev work while mobile and even though I have all the latest, common tech it's still death by a thousand cuts. If I'd be doing this kind of thing with obscure distros and hardware I'd probably not have even slept last night. When in a pinch, it really does not seem realistic at all. I don't understand how you guys do it.
mrobot 5y ago
Does anyone know what day Tech Inquiry provided these documents to The Intercept? Seems kinda convenient we get our nice exciting "adversarial" article about this four days /after/ the infrastructure bill passes and we are locked in to have tons of new bank surveillance and like 80,000 new IRS agents...
- mrobot 5y ago
  Our go-to adversarial source asking all the tough questions about digital data rights, surveillance capitalism, and new digital banking surveillance is a paper edited by PayPal, inc.
- judge2020 5y ago
  I imagine they're trying to stagger news, this is one of those articles where it's probably a scoop, but you don't want to have it buried by everything about the infrastructure bill lest nobody see this one.
- math_and_stuff 5y ago
  The article was published Nov. 4, days before the infrastructure bill passed. Not yesterday. You can easily find this in the header of the article.
imchillyb 5y ago
It's interesting how companies, and governments, are quick to tell us how our data isn't worth anything so they don't have to pay us for it. It's not private, but they recognize the violation of privacy laws by purchasing through 3rd parties. Our data is worth $,$$$,$$$,$$$'s and it's time we campaigned to get paid. It's time we change privacy laws worldwide to make violations of individual privacy worth 30% of a company's gross income for 5 years. If the penalty is large enough, they'll stop screwing us. We can't send a company to prison, but we sure as hell can take that prison tax right off the top of their bottom line. Hell 30% gross profits for 5 years is probably not even enough, but it's a good damn start
cinquemb 5y ago
DeFi and free and open source clients that users can modify/compile at will for whatever platform they are on, solves this. Really cannot trust centralized entities with the incentives in place now.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
We should be asking why the fuck this is for sale. Why is this okay? I hate this new normal but I look around and nobody cares. Nobody I talk to IRL gives a shit. This is our reality. How do we learn to navigate this strange new post privacy environment?
- coldacid 5y ago
  For a start, by opting out of as much of the "conveniences" that enable this bullshit to begin with. Easier said than done, but it's truly the most necessary step.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Why is because Congress has been captured by big corporations and their lobbying money for nearly a century now. Anything pro-consumer that stands to limit the upper bounds of profit (that doesn't literally threaten the collapse of the nation) is just a signal for their corporate donors that they haven't been paid enough that year to keep quiet.
varenc 5y ago
Babel Street, the firm selling data to the IRS, seems to say they don't have to follow the California CCPA requirements around data access or data deletion. Their only mention of CCPA is obtuse but implies it's their customers' responsibility: https://www.babelstreet.com/privacy-policy https://www.babelstreet.com/privacy-policy My understanding was that if a company has my personal data and is selling it, the CCPA requires that they allow me to put in a request to access that data or delete it. Babel Street seems to be saying that it's their customers who needs to follow these requirements not them. Is this legit? Tons of other big sketchy personal data brokers actually allow you to access and delete your data under the CCPA even though they have the same customer arrangement. Acxiom for example: https://www.acxiom.com/data-privacy-ethics/california-consumer-privacy-act/for-consumers/ https://www.acxiom.com/data-privacy-ethics/california-consum...
- judge2020 5y ago
  CCPA calls these companies data brokers[0], which are still subject to the CCPA. They might be acting facetious in saying that, since you'd usually have to also go to their customers to get your data deleted in addition to asking them for deletion [as in, they don't have to inform their customers to delete the data]. > Data brokers are subject to the CCPA. On the Data Broker Registry website, you will find contact information and a website link for each registered data broker, as well as additional information to help you exercise your CCPA rights. 0: https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#sectiong https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#sectiong
  - varenc 5y ago
    Was genuinely curious. Thanks for the info. Of course Babel Street isn’t listed in the official CCPA Data Broker registry: https://oag.ca.gov/data-brokers https://oag.ca.gov/data-brokers So by not allowing me to access and delete my data on Babel Street, it seems like they are in violation of the CCPA? What’s my recourse? Anyone interested in privacy who can claim California residency should be interested too!
EricE 5y ago
Overreach like this is how governments spin out of control. I'm shocked and amazed by how much of this stuff more and more people are not only content to ignore, but defend! 9/11 opened more of a pandoras box than anyone could have ever imagined. Our concerns back then now seem quaint compared to the stuff that is going on right now with many of our government institutions :(

389 points by _-david-_ 5y ago

jdhn 5y ago

I'm curious what the overall take will be on this. Normally, this action would be frowned upon if it was a private company, but I'm assuming that people may be more open to it being done by Treasury because it's "for the societal good".

HWR_14 5y ago
Funny, I assume the exact opposite. I'm guessing many people oppose government data collection but because they are buying data on the open market from people who "opt in", they're okay with it. I wish there was the ability to make a poll: * This is fine, privacy is dead. * This is okay because of private companies collecting and selling the data, even to the government * This is okay because the government is using this data to enforce laws I believe in, even though it rewards private data merchants. * Everyone involved is evil, the contracts should be voided and the companies dissolved.
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  If you want to politicize any issue at all it must become a zero sum prisoners dilemma where I enjoy the benefits and the dreaded "other" is annihilated.
- Cycl0ps 5y ago
  https://strawpoll.com/a584xf5re https://strawpoll.com/a584xf5re
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - derekjdanserl 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - getcrunk 5y ago
      I mean the available options kinda forces that.
      - handrous 5y ago
        I, for one, liked the options, and happily chose "Everyone involved is evil, the contracts should be voided and the companies dissolved." I think middle age is turning me into some flavor anarchist. Weird.
    - dang 5y ago
      "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." There are two reasons why we have this guideline: (1) Supercilious putdowns of other people on the internet are among the lowest quality type of comment; and (2) Grandiose generalizations about the community are nearly always just the result of a few (or maybe just one) data points that the speaker didn't like. They're nearly all bogus, which is why people with opposite likes and dislikes express exactly the opposite general conclusions. Again, this is among the lowest quality type of comment. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22false%20feelings%20of%20generality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- wongarsu 5y ago
  There's also * The data collection is fine, but the government shouldn't be allowed to circumvent checks and balances by buying this data * The government using such data without warrant is fine, but it shouldn't be sold on the open market
  - fidesomnes 5y ago
    oh okay, stop it when you get a chance.
- akamaka 5y ago
  * It’s much more urgent to address how private companies use the data, since we at least have some visibility into what the government is doing with it.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Whether I think it's fine or not, privacy is dead.
- ncallaway 5y ago
  Can we...can we have at least one "not okay" option that doesn't brand everyone involved as evil?
  - xerox13ster 5y ago
    If it's not okay, then everyone involved made a choice to be complicit in something that is "not okay". Willingly participating in harmful activities isn't evil?
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Only if you do it while twirling a mustache.
    - ncallaway 5y ago
      The action is evil, but I don’t think that makes the person evil. People are much more complex than a single choice. Second, while I might think the action is “not okay”, they might be reasoning from different principles, or different evidence than I am. Maybe, instead of being complicit in something I view as “not okay”, they have valid reasons to think it’s “okay”. I’m just not so willing to condemn every person with such a broad brush just because I disagree on this conclusion.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  this is bad because people who opt in think either that their data is not being sold to third parties or that the third party buying data is another company, nobody when opting in assumes that their data will be used in an investigation that can then lead to criminal charges.
- quantified 5y ago
  We all committed privacy suicide when we bought smartphones. The data that we thought should be out of government hands, we put into the hands of many businesses. I agree it seems unsettling, but why can’t the government purchase information on the open market?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nybble41 5y ago
    > … why can’t the government purchase information on the open market? The most obvious answer would be that they're spending our money in a way which is contrary to our interests. If it were their own funds, and they had no powers beyond those of any other private citizen or organization, that would be one thing. But they're supposed to be acting on our behalf, in our interests rather than their own, and to many people this does not qualify. Personally I would focus less on the fact that they've obtained this information and more on (a) the fact that this information is available on the market and (b) how they (and others) intend to use it.
    - quantified 5y ago
      That was the point I was inadequately trying to draw attention to also. Yes.
leereeves 5y ago
> but I'm assuming that people may be more open to it being done by Treasury because it's "for the societal good". Politics in America has become so hostile that people are now openly celebrating harm done to "the other side", so I don't doubt that there are people who will feel that way. But I suspect that most of them will feel quite differently when the White House is controlled by the other party.
bragr 5y ago
I don't have a problem with the government accessing the data per se. Given that the data exists and is commercially available, it would seem silly to tie their hands from accessing it. Police routinely run credit checks or just google people of interest to learn what is publicly known about them and I don't really have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that our privacy laws and culture are so lax that detailed location information has essentially become part of the public record of a person. It seems like one way or the other, governments will find avenues to get at that data if it exists, and if you don't want the government tracking people, better to cut the data off at the source.
cma 5y ago
Imagine the government wanted to know who "deepthroat" was during Watergate: just buy the location data of the journalists and anyone nearby.
- pempem 5y ago
  And then they are violently removed from the populous like the single journalist who reported on the Panama Papers https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-panama-papers-journalist https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb...
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    That journalist published a lot of articles that exposed a lot of powerful people long before the Panama Papers.
SyzygistSix 5y ago
There is a reason the government is not allowed to buy this kind of data from telcos. What makes buying it from a professional surveillance group any different?

nostromo 5y ago

We need a Supreme Court ruling or law that says if the government doesn’t have a warrant to collect your data, they also can’t buy it from third parties. We also need privacy protections so these companies wouldn’t exist in the first place.

closeparen 5y ago
Almost all investigative work is asking people to share information that they don’t legally have to.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  Interviewing a person is not "search and seizure"; the two things are categorically different.
  - tzs 5y ago
    So looking at all your comments so far, it appears that: 1. If Bob is selling data that he legally obtained about Alice and legally can sell, it is a search if the government buys that data from Bob, and 2. If the government interviews Bob and Bob gives them data about Alice, it is not a search. I'm failing to see the distinction you are making.
austincheney 5y ago
Why? I understand the subject is unpleasant but I don't see anything that remotely qualifies as legal over reach. Users must sign a consent statement to a terms of services agreement. That is a voluntary action where users erode their own privacy protections and surrender their contributions. Anything that happens later is completely incidental and solely between the data owner (which is not the user) and the third party.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  Irrelevant to the 4th amendment. A service's TOS does not absolve the government of its constitutional prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure. Buying data from a 3rd party service is still a search and seizure, much like paying a hitman is still first-degree murder. The question is whether it is reasonable.

AlexandrB 5y ago

This is not a new take, but I think "the west" is effectively building their own version of China's social credit. It's just distributed among a range of private companies and accessed via subpoena or contract. The fact that the government doesn't operate most of it directly is largely irrelevant to those negatively affected by it and in some ways makes the situation worse (who do you even contact to correct inaccurate information?).

wongarsu 5y ago
Being able to correct inaccurate information is an often underappreciated but important part of the GDPR. It's also probably the biggest motivation why you have a right to ask any company what data they have stored about you: so you can spot mistakes in the data of rating agencies. The other use cases are more of a nice bonus.
- Jon_Lowtek 5y ago
  While i completely agree that the right to correct data is an underappreciated aspect, the biggest motivation is the fundamental right to your own personal data. It motivates the more detailed ones like the right to know who processes your personal data, for what purpose, which data they have, and to correct that data. Not to forget the right to be informed and asked for consent. The "why" of these rights is not found in the robber barons wish to improve the quality of their data swamps. It is found in the wish of the european people to preserve their freedom in the digital age against surveillance capitalism and/or totalitarian governments. I can only hope our brothers and sisters worldwide will one day understand that and demand such a fundamental right as well.
tehjoker 5y ago
Wait until the US public finds out about the concept of a credit score (new in the 1980s).
- mc32 5y ago
  Credit score for ghee most part tries to assure lenders you can repay your debts. Social credit score is about how close you hew to proscribed behavior at large.

shrubble 5y ago

Idea: get together some money, buy data of 100 of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Publish everything found, see if the laws are then changed...

CameronNemo 5y ago
They did that, twice. Panama and Pandora papers (2016, 2021). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_Papers
darkwizard42 5y ago
A good start, but their profiles are probably incredibly well scrubbed (or whatever is out there is already mitigated). Instead, collect it on every Congressperson and then see how fast things change. Most politicians don't have the means to scrub their backgrounds like multi-million dollar PR-vulnerable CEOs.
- saganus 5y ago
  Seems more likely that those same Congresspersons (Congresspeople?) will try to stomp you out of existence, before making any changes to the law. I don't imagine people with such amount of power and connections to just roll over because "they caught us with the hand in the cookie jar!"
- 0des 5y ago
  > A good start, but their profiles are probably incredibly well scrubbed (or whatever is out there is already mitigated). I have serious doubts about this.
- freddie_mercury 5y ago
  Congresspeople are also all multimillionaires who are PR vulnerable. As of 2011, the average Senator had a net worth of $14 million and the average Representative had a net worth of $6.5 million. Presumably it has only gone up in the decade since, given the long bull market in everything. https://ballotpedia.org/Net_worth_of_United_States_Senators_and_Representatives https://ballotpedia.org/Net_worth_of_United_States_Senators_...

motohagiography 5y ago

If one sees the U.S. constitution and its amendments merely as dated conventions, there is no reason for the IRS and other agencies not to leverage tech to drive enforcement numbers, and for the agencies themselves to just become the policy levers they want to have. However, there are others who believe the rules are in place to prevent this precise type of eventuality, where a technological change shifts the balance of power and shreds any perception of a social contract, so you need rules that limit the scope and powers of government so it doesn't consume and enslave everything. I think a generation of people who believe the former statement have taken control of institutions, and we're watching it play out now. If you want to predict what this generation of bureaucracy will do, find the emergency exceptions and notwithstanding discretion to every law that protects the individual and limits the power of government, and then contrive the excuse that enables it, and this will be the policy and tactics of the people behind it. This Treasury collecting data story isn't about legalisms and principles, the people doing it really are nihilists, where language itself is just words that can mean anything, so it might as well mean whatever they want. Arguing under the false belief that principles and logic matters means doing nothing while they ratchet up controls and make themselves impossible to dislodge. You aren't going to persuade the Treasury or other people involved in these plays with reason, as the prospect of total, permanent, tech-facilitated dominion means the stakes are too high for them not to make a play for it. Only the courts, or sadly, conflict can dislodge it I think. We need to seriously consider how much tech is causing our governments to metastasize, and what the options for mitigating it are. There is no reason to believe your phone that tracks everything about you will not be used by people in government without accountability as leverage against you personally. This was paranoid ranting 20 years ago, and today it's just unpopular buzzkill. All that's left is to say "it was ever thus" and the only people who complained were the ones merely maladapted to the change and the inevitable progress of history.

jasonfarnon 5y ago
"I think a generation of people who believe the former statement have taken control of institutions" I think the cause and effect are backwards here. It is their having taken control of institutions that makes individuals less likely to take seriously the spirit of pesky constitutional protections. Which was of course foreseen by the founding fathers.

downWidOutaFite 5y ago

A lot of right vs left division is one side wanting to restrain corporations and the other side wanting to restrain government. Privacy concerns are one way to break through that divide when government and corporations unite.

smallerfish 5y ago

a) Both contracts are tiny ($150k each) although obviously these may be pilot programs. b) Finding evaders of sanctions seems like it should fall under a national security agency's purvue. We all take it for granted that the NSA could pinpoint our locations pretty easily, right? One thing that's particularly insane about the US government is how many departments have intelligence agencies. Obviously the ideal would be to have a small handful of well regulated intelligence agencies (emphasis on "well regulated", and you only have to look at the overreach by e.g. the CIA over the past 50 years to know that the US has had issues with that.) c) The tax evasion contract looks at social media posts to find tax evaders. I wouldn't be particularly upset if the IRS had their own internal tech department doing this - if you're going to have a tax agency, you want it to be able to prevent cheating, otherwise the tax system falls apart. Finding people who have declared themselves to have beaten the system in a public forum is a cheap and easy way to go after cheaters. There's a lot of pork in contracts that government agencies give out to private contractors, but this seems like a relatively low spend, and so it doesn't seem particularly bad that the IRS has decided that this is outside of their current expertise and given out a contract to chase it.

Zak 5y ago
> We all take it for granted that the NSA could pinpoint our locations pretty easily, right? In the same way we take it for granted that a SWAT team could kill any of us pretty easily. They have (and probably should have) the ability, but the authority to use it should be very limited and subject to stringent oversight.
- smallerfish 5y ago
  No doubt. But, say that the NSA were given the purvue over enforcing sanctions (because they are the national security agency). Should they be able to monitor who is visiting the country with the sanctions? Sanctions are kind of like the tax agency situation - if you're going to wield them as a national security tool, then you want to be able to enforce them, otherwise they're relatively meaningless. And enforcing them necessarily involves watching to see if your country's citizens are evading them.

cabbagehead 5y ago

The pseudonymised ad data is just going to tell you the numbers of people travelling to sanctioned states. No big deal. There would be a story here if the government was re-identifying people, which would be a clear breach of the law. But there’s no evidence or suggestion of that happening, just “assume the worst of government” speculation. Poor journalism. As for looking at public social media posts for evidence of tax dodging, I’d hope that if someone was dumb enough to advertise this publicly, and everyone can see they are abusing other citizens out of funding for public services, the IRS should look into it.

austincheney 5y ago

It stands to reason that the government won't need a warrant to gather criminally admissible data from a service broker if it is voluntarily transferred to the government and the service broker forced its users to agree to a terms of service agreement. I also see lots of talk in the comments about a social credit and hiring potential. There are no restrictions on hiring software developers. As horrible as a social credit sounds at least its some kind of guardrails, where now there are none. In any system without constraints there is maximum potential for implicit bias.

cblconfederate 5y ago

At this point why not privatize the government? It will save the US billions of dollars in deals.

siruncledrew 5y ago

How much do you think this has to do with the government trying extra hard now to tax crypto?

cjcole 5y ago

It seems apparent that the US government is pursuing a novel strategy to route around the Bill of Rights: Steps: * Allow (and encourage) private sector monopolies to form * Use its leverage and influence to "encourage" those monopolies to do things which the US government is not allowed to do (examples: censorship, data collection) The list of First Amendment precedents, for example, with respect to the government is long and detailed. On the other hand, private companies operate under fewer restrictions and can act much more freely. So if we have a situation where there are a small number of monopolies and they, through personal relationships (marriage), lobbying, and the revolving door have a cozy relationship with the US government, then the government can effectively censor (for example) by more or less declaring "will no one rid me of these turbulent tweets" and have the monopolies jump to comply (or face increased risk of antitrust action for example). This is a win-win for both: the monopolies avoid antitrust and other unwanted regulation by playing ball, and the government gets to ignore the Bill of Rights by "outsourcing" actions to what are in effect de facto quasi-governmental entities. It's only a loss for the people for whom the Bill of Rights was written to protect.

getcrunk 5y ago
This is exactly what is happening. And afaict as far back as the 70's. Major isp's taking public funds, close relationship between nsa and Google
deleted 5y ago
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jkhdigital 5y ago
Kind of reminds me of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. The discretionary federal budget averages like 8% of the economy--that is an ungodly amount of economic resources that can be directed to private entities to accomplish basically anything the government wants to do, regardless of what the Constitution dictates.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

If this wasn't mentioned in "Dragnet Nation" (2014) it was at least (strongly) suggested. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragnet_Nation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragnet_Nation That is, once data is on the open market (including at dark web) then a gov acquiring it is a click or two away.

sroussey 5y ago

You should see the data they are buying on crypto related persons. 8-/

cromka 5y ago

Yeah, but GDPR is pain in the ass and all such, right?

literallyaduck 5y ago

Don't like it? Organizations like the EFF have been working to stop overreach: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/eff-fincen-stop-pushing-more-financial-surveillance https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/eff-fincen-stop-pushin... You can help financially, and contact each of your representatives and senators and request they act to stop this end run around the constitution.

TeeMassive 5y ago
Upvote for the EFF. They really are the heroes of digital time. And they stayed true to their mission amidst the woke wave other organizations have been swayed with.
- boppo1 5y ago
  I gave them $100 and about a year later they saved youtube-dl. Soon as I'm actually making money again, they'll get some.
dmead 5y ago
Is this over reach? Seems like it would be good for the treasury to go after tax dodgers and money launderers.
- mattrighetti 5y ago
  They have other means that won’t have an impact on everyone when it’s not necessary
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Destroying confidentiality of data on the net is a greater cost than getting small time tax evaders. The brunt of tax evasion is legal and fully a legislative issue.
user3939382 5y ago
I used to be a big EFF supporter until I learned they take millions in donations from the same organizations they’re supposed to be watching. Best case scenario it’s a massive conflict of interest, it’s a big problem for me that they find it to be ok.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

“ Critics of the software say it essentially allows the state to buy its way past the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans from unreasonable searches.” Interesting. Clearly data analysis can find all the tax dodgers, but is that an unreasonable search?

1cvmask 5y ago

Privacy invasion and surveillance is like invading countries a bipartisan issue. They always moan when one side uses government excesses against the "other" side but still vote for enhanced executive power and overreach all the time. The national security and surveillance state is as bipartisan as putting economic sanctions on poor Latin American countries, arming proxies, funding NGO fronts and bombing countries.

ineedasername 5y ago

Unfortunately, this isn't really the Fed's buying their way around the 4th amendment as the article states: it's people selling away their 4th amendment rights by giving their personal data & right to resell it to companies that will sell to anyone with the cash to buy it.

Goety 5y ago
Regulation could easily reverse the flow of data
- dd36 5y ago
  We need an FCRA for data. We need the ability to rescind the data if it’s a third-party.
storyinmemo 5y ago
As I understand it, that's not quite true. I can't get a phone provider that won't pen register my data off. It's not an option and it's entirely not practical to conduct life without a phone of some kind.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  Telco data is actually specifically protected specifically for this reason. It’s immune from third party doctrine, which is the whole, “the govt can ask someone else who has your data for it.” Not sure how that exception is being handled in the Treasury case.
- LogonType10 5y ago
  Mint mobile. Buy the SIM card with cash. People say they want privacy, but people say a lot of things they don't mean. Instead I look at their actions. No one's willing to inconvenience themselves even slightly for privacy.
  - stemlord 5y ago
    I just spent the last couple days on a business trip, trying to do dev work while mobile and even though I have all the latest, common tech it's still death by a thousand cuts. If I'd be doing this kind of thing with obscure distros and hardware I'd probably not have even slept last night. When in a pinch, it really does not seem realistic at all. I don't understand how you guys do it.

mrobot 5y ago

Does anyone know what day Tech Inquiry provided these documents to The Intercept? Seems kinda convenient we get our nice exciting "adversarial" article about this four days /after/ the infrastructure bill passes and we are locked in to have tons of new bank surveillance and like 80,000 new IRS agents...

mrobot 5y ago
Our go-to adversarial source asking all the tough questions about digital data rights, surveillance capitalism, and new digital banking surveillance is a paper edited by PayPal, inc.
judge2020 5y ago
I imagine they're trying to stagger news, this is one of those articles where it's probably a scoop, but you don't want to have it buried by everything about the infrastructure bill lest nobody see this one.
math_and_stuff 5y ago
The article was published Nov. 4, days before the infrastructure bill passed. Not yesterday. You can easily find this in the header of the article.

imchillyb 5y ago

It's interesting how companies, and governments, are quick to tell us how our data isn't worth anything so they don't have to pay us for it. It's not private, but they recognize the violation of privacy laws by purchasing through 3rd parties. Our data is worth $,$$$,$$$,$$$'s and it's time we campaigned to get paid. It's time we change privacy laws worldwide to make violations of individual privacy worth 30% of a company's gross income for 5 years. If the penalty is large enough, they'll stop screwing us. We can't send a company to prison, but we sure as hell can take that prison tax right off the top of their bottom line. Hell 30% gross profits for 5 years is probably not even enough, but it's a good damn start

cinquemb 5y ago

DeFi and free and open source clients that users can modify/compile at will for whatever platform they are on, solves this. Really cannot trust centralized entities with the incentives in place now.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

We should be asking why the fuck this is for sale. Why is this okay? I hate this new normal but I look around and nobody cares. Nobody I talk to IRL gives a shit. This is our reality. How do we learn to navigate this strange new post privacy environment?

coldacid 5y ago
For a start, by opting out of as much of the "conveniences" that enable this bullshit to begin with. Easier said than done, but it's truly the most necessary step.
judge2020 5y ago
Why is because Congress has been captured by big corporations and their lobbying money for nearly a century now. Anything pro-consumer that stands to limit the upper bounds of profit (that doesn't literally threaten the collapse of the nation) is just a signal for their corporate donors that they haven't been paid enough that year to keep quiet.

varenc 5y ago

Babel Street, the firm selling data to the IRS, seems to say they don't have to follow the California CCPA requirements around data access or data deletion. Their only mention of CCPA is obtuse but implies it's their customers' responsibility: https://www.babelstreet.com/privacy-policy https://www.babelstreet.com/privacy-policy My understanding was that if a company has my personal data and is selling it, the CCPA requires that they allow me to put in a request to access that data or delete it. Babel Street seems to be saying that it's their customers who needs to follow these requirements not them. Is this legit? Tons of other big sketchy personal data brokers actually allow you to access and delete your data under the CCPA even though they have the same customer arrangement. Acxiom for example: https://www.acxiom.com/data-privacy-ethics/california-consumer-privacy-act/for-consumers/ https://www.acxiom.com/data-privacy-ethics/california-consum...

judge2020 5y ago
CCPA calls these companies data brokers[0], which are still subject to the CCPA. They might be acting facetious in saying that, since you'd usually have to also go to their customers to get your data deleted in addition to asking them for deletion [as in, they don't have to inform their customers to delete the data]. > Data brokers are subject to the CCPA. On the Data Broker Registry website, you will find contact information and a website link for each registered data broker, as well as additional information to help you exercise your CCPA rights. 0: https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#sectiong https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#sectiong
- varenc 5y ago
  Was genuinely curious. Thanks for the info. Of course Babel Street isn’t listed in the official CCPA Data Broker registry: https://oag.ca.gov/data-brokers https://oag.ca.gov/data-brokers So by not allowing me to access and delete my data on Babel Street, it seems like they are in violation of the CCPA? What’s my recourse? Anyone interested in privacy who can claim California residency should be interested too!

EricE 5y ago

Overreach like this is how governments spin out of control. I'm shocked and amazed by how much of this stuff more and more people are not only content to ignore, but defend! 9/11 opened more of a pandoras box than anyone could have ever imagined. Our concerns back then now seem quaint compared to the stuff that is going on right now with many of our government institutions :(