> Unless your data is fully encrypted or stored locally by you, the government often can get it from a communications or computing company. > Traditionally, th

> Unless your data is fully encrypted or stored locally by you, the government often can get it from a communications or computing company. > Traditionally, that required a court order. But increasingly, the government just buys it from data brokers who bought it from the adtech industry. I presume the adtech industry includes Meta and Google. But some people (even here) get indignant and say “no, Meta doesn’t really sell your data” or “no, Google doesn’t really sell your data”. If these companies are participating in this ecosystem and buying from data brokers, they’re just as evil as the data brokers. Let’s not pretend that Meta and Google are saints who should not be criticized for making most of their money from these relationships and enabling surveillance.