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A future government that is analogous to Nazi Germany wants to put certain groups into a concentration camp ("sexual deviants", religious minorities, you take y

A future government that is analogous to Nazi Germany wants to put certain groups into a concentration camp ("sexual deviants", religious minorities, you take your pick). Better hope there isn't a CC history that shows you buying sex toys or religious items in the last 30 years. Sure, in the western part of the world, you could think that this is paranoid, but depending on where you are in the world, and what minorities you belong to the risk is real. Heck, even in the US with the way the SCOTUS is going, this may become relevant sooner than you'd expect.

MereInterest 4y ago
I'd say it's already relevant. From an article last week [0], location data identifying visits to Planned Parenthood was easily purchasable. While this particular company removed that category in response to the article [1], there's nothing that would prevent other data brokers from selling the same information. The US is far, far overdue for a GDPR-style privacy law. (Also, we need a better term than "data brokers", as that term is biased toward their legitimacy. "Digital stalkers" or "stalkers for hire" imply that the stalking occurs after the point of hire, rather than being proactively performed on everybody. "Privacy abusers" is accurate, but non-specific. I don't have a term that would encompass the omnipresent spying, the danger of a dataset's existence against future threats, and the low price they put on our privacy. Bonus points if the term could call out the false dichotomy of public vs private.) [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vzjb/location-data-abortion-clinics-safegraph-planned-parenthood https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vzjb/location-data-abortio... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/data-broker-safegraph-stops-selling-abortion-provider-information.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/data-broker-safegraph-stops-... Edit: That said, advocating for privacy is not advocating for cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are by design massively inefficient, in the same way that a low-trust society is inefficient, and somehow touts that as a virtue.

MereInterest 4y ago

I'd say it's already relevant. From an article last week [0], location data identifying visits to Planned Parenthood was easily purchasable. While this particular company removed that category in response to the article [1], there's nothing that would prevent other data brokers from selling the same information. The US is far, far overdue for a GDPR-style privacy law. (Also, we need a better term than "data brokers", as that term is biased toward their legitimacy. "Digital stalkers" or "stalkers for hire" imply that the stalking occurs after the point of hire, rather than being proactively performed on everybody. "Privacy abusers" is accurate, but non-specific. I don't have a term that would encompass the omnipresent spying, the danger of a dataset's existence against future threats, and the low price they put on our privacy. Bonus points if the term could call out the false dichotomy of public vs private.) [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vzjb/location-data-abortion-clinics-safegraph-planned-parenthood https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vzjb/location-data-abortio... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/data-broker-safegraph-stops-selling-abortion-provider-information.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/data-broker-safegraph-stops-... Edit: That said, advocating for privacy is not advocating for cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are by design massively inefficient, in the same way that a low-trust society is inefficient, and somehow touts that as a virtue.