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So we can't dragnet surveil our own people? Hmm, how about we just buy it from the folks who do it for work? Then _we're_ not doing it. _We're_ just buying a bu

So we can't dragnet surveil our own people? Hmm, how about we just buy it from the folks who do it for work? Then _we're_ not doing it. _We're_ just buying a bundle of data from a broker. Couple this with the idea that we soft-spy on our Allies and then trade that data for their spying on our people and yeah, wow.

bilbo0s 1y ago
In all honesty it wouldn't even matter. If the data brokers sell data, then even if they didn't sell it to the government, they would sell it to "PR/Lobbying Firms" who lobby the government. They would sell it to "security contracting firms" who the government contracts with to, um, escort "aid" shipments to widows and orphans in places like Yemen or Colombia, or Nebraska. And so on and so forth. The fundamental mistake was never about the government. The fundamental mistake was in allowing the data brokers to exist, collect, and sell the data in the first place.
- iugtmkbdfil834 1y ago
  And once there is a cottage industry in place and money is rolling, any attempt to adjust by privacy conscious portion of the population will be neutered or overruled by aggressive lobbying. And that is assuming the amoral entities having access to all that data won't attempt to use it to put a finger on a scale.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    And the lobbying dollars will go twice as far because the existence of the industry benefits the government. Whereas a normal industry has to fight an uphill lobbying battle where the courts and enforcers and legislators extract the maximal pound of flesh at every step the government will bend over backward to make it go easy for the privacy invasion industry. The only ways these status quos change is when people hate the industry so much that being in bed with it threatens the reelection of the politicians and the legitimacy of the institutions can the tide shift.
    - bilbo0s 1y ago
      So true. It's so clear to me now that it was foolish to go after the government for what was, at root, a problem emanating from private industry practices. That was unimaginably dumb. It's clear the issue was obviously the private industry practices the whole time. Those practices are what we should have been trying to stamp out from the start.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

bilbo0s 1y ago

In all honesty it wouldn't even matter. If the data brokers sell data, then even if they didn't sell it to the government, they would sell it to "PR/Lobbying Firms" who lobby the government. They would sell it to "security contracting firms" who the government contracts with to, um, escort "aid" shipments to widows and orphans in places like Yemen or Colombia, or Nebraska. And so on and so forth. The fundamental mistake was never about the government. The fundamental mistake was in allowing the data brokers to exist, collect, and sell the data in the first place.

iugtmkbdfil834 1y ago
And once there is a cottage industry in place and money is rolling, any attempt to adjust by privacy conscious portion of the population will be neutered or overruled by aggressive lobbying. And that is assuming the amoral entities having access to all that data won't attempt to use it to put a finger on a scale.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  And the lobbying dollars will go twice as far because the existence of the industry benefits the government. Whereas a normal industry has to fight an uphill lobbying battle where the courts and enforcers and legislators extract the maximal pound of flesh at every step the government will bend over backward to make it go easy for the privacy invasion industry. The only ways these status quos change is when people hate the industry so much that being in bed with it threatens the reelection of the politicians and the legitimacy of the institutions can the tide shift.
  - bilbo0s 1y ago
    So true. It's so clear to me now that it was foolish to go after the government for what was, at root, a problem emanating from private industry practices. That was unimaginably dumb. It's clear the issue was obviously the private industry practices the whole time. Those practices are what we should have been trying to stamp out from the start.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]