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Government agencies buy commercial data about Americans in bulk
- renegat0x0 6mo agoI remember term "privacy laundering" and "surveillance capitalism". Example 2019 article https://www.lawfareblog.com/facebook-encryption-and-dangers-privacy-laundering https://www.lawfareblog.com/facebook-encryption-and-dangers-... In reality nothing new.
- strogonoff 6mo agoBuying commercially available location records from data brokers would be far less concerning without the capability to, per Anthropic’s CEO words, assemble from that data “a comprehensive picture of any person's life—automatically and at massive scale”. It’s a world of difference between when you have to work hard to construct (and keep up-to-date) such a picture for a single individual, and when someone can do it for an entire city with no effort.
- ra 6mo agoExactly this. I don't that believe most people can grasp the scale, speed and complexity at which this is has become our reality.
- stingraycharles 6mo agoAnd, unfortunately, this is likely a major (potential) revenue source for AI companies that are all struggling for cash.
- samrus 6mo agoSure but the possession itself of that data without a warrant violates the spirit of the 4th ammendment. So its time that loophole was closed so its not a an issue anyway I actually would be fine with the authorities having the ability to process this data to solve crime and stuff, but only as long as there were checks and balances and it was happening according to the constitution, which it is not right now
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> possession itself of that data without a warrant violates the spirit of the 4th ammendment Does it? An 18th-century tavern owner could keep tabs on the comings and goings of their customers. It would have just prompted pushback when they started sharing that list. Possession isn’t the problem. Sharing is.
- hackable_sand 6mo agoReally?
- dekken_ 6mo agoNo, the bar owner has a right know who's in his bar. The local or federal government do not have the right, or need to know the whereabouts of the average law abiding citizen. There is no "free" information, all information has a cost, whether it be acquisition or storage. Currently the people are taxed to oppress themselves. There is no choice not to be taxed, there is no consent.
- Propelloni 6mo ago[flagged]
- dekken_ 6mo agoYou don't understand consent, lots of people don't vote. And even if they do, they don't automatically consent to all actions performed in their name.
- devin 6mo agoWhat an incredibly misinformed comment. You need to educate yourself. What you wrote is downright anti-American.
- ashtonshears 6mo agoSilence demon!
- mattsimpson 6mo agoNot enough people are talking about this. It seems to me like the vast majority of people just don't care, primarily because they don't understand the ways it could dramatically impact them in the future. Short term thinking is a scary phenomenon.
- plagiarist 6mo ago"I don't have anything to hide," sort of foolishness.
- bloomingeek 6mo agoThis statement is from those who don't understand what's possibly at stake and those who are afraid to find out. Who can say how bad this will be for the kids in high school now, in the future? (Or most likely sooner.) While we in the US argue about politics, we ignore what's happening behind the curtain.
- kleiba 6mo agoListen, this is nothing new. You can find articles like that going back years and years. The truth is: convenience trumps privacy in practice in a lot of cases. Two examples: 1. Theoretically speaking, my (data) privacy is of a high value to me! -- Then you should stop using a smart phone. -- Well... 2. I don't want anyone to create a profile of my habits because it's none of their business! -- Hi, do you have a Walmart+ card? -- Sure, here you go! And I actually like the concept of reward cards (although I don't use them) because it is pretty much the only way how you can make money off your data.
- applfanboysbgon 6mo ago> Listen, this is nothing new. "Violations of your constitutional rights have been going on for decades now, so it's time to shut up about them" is certainly a take.
- kleiba 6mo agoPutting words into other people's mouth isn't the best etiquette: where did I say "it's time to shut up about them"??
- applfanboysbgon 6mo agoYour tone implies it. "Listen, this is nothing new" is a phrase dripping with "I'm tired of hearing about this". You surely know that the people pointing out continually escalating violations know that the violations are not new.
- cimaster 6mo agoThe irony of npr.org welcoming me with "We and our 474 partners store and access personal data, like browsing data or unique identifiers, on your device." 474!!!
- kgwxd 6mo agoNot ironic, unfortunate reality. I'm annoyed npr and 474 use personal data for profit. It should be illegal. I'm terrified the government uses personal data without checks on the use case. Especially since it is illegal, and they just don't care about that. Or there's a loophole, or whatever, and they just don't care how The People will react to them using it, which is just as terrifying.
- troupo 6mo agoSome of those "partners" may be storing your precise geolocation for 12 years: https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541 https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541
- j-bos 6mo agoThis story cones uo time and time again, people rail about the data buyer, but practically speaking any one or thing can buy that data and use it against you and yours. The very collection/assembly of life data is dangerous.
- amelius 6mo agoCan't we just buy the data of politicians to make them aware of the problem?
- _vere 6mo agoNetzpolitik.org actually reported on what you can do with this type of data a while ago. They tricked a databroker into getting a free sample of geolocation data, 3.6 billion datapoints. They were able to build individual movement profiles for people and link that with real identities by putting just a little bit of work in. For a government with access to stuff like palantir this would mean a full movement profile for pretty much everyone with a phone. German article about movement profiles: https://netzpolitik.org/2024/databroker-files-firma-verschleudert-36-milliarden-standorte-von-menschen-in-deutschland/ https://netzpolitik.org/2024/databroker-files-firma-verschle... Broader article about their research into the databroker topic: https://netzpolitik.org/2024/databroker-files-die-grosse-datenhaendler-recherche-im-ueberblick/ https://netzpolitik.org/2024/databroker-files-die-grosse-dat... Wired article for English speakers: https://archive.ph/DmWrw https://archive.ph/DmWrw Wired frames this a little strange, around how the government is powerless to stop it and such, especially considering how they now actively admit this is in their interest.
- halJordan 6mo agoThere was a great piece published back during the Patriot Act debates where a princeton or harvard professor used modern math techniques and tavern records to triangulate for arrest the early Patriots and their meeting spots. It was a great article.
- guzfip 6mo agoGot a link to this? Sounds like a fun read.
- sdoering 6mo agoNot OP, but here you go. OP had it slightly wrong though: it's not tavern records but membership lists of colonial Boston organizations, and the author is a sociology professor (Kieran Healy), not from Princeton or Harvard. He uses basic social network analysis on historical membership data to identify Paul Revere as the key figure among 254 colonists using nothing but "metadata." The whole thing is written as a satirical report by a British intelligence analyst in the 1770s, which makes it a pretty effective commentary on the "it's just metadata" argument from the NSA debates. Link: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/ https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
- krtkush 6mo agoFor a deep dive into the topic, I will recommend the book - Means of control by Byron Tau [1] [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706321/means-of-control-by-byron-tau/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706321/means-of-con...
- shevy-java 6mo agoIt is betrayal. Governments betray the people. That is by definition betrayal. In this context "age verification" must be seen as an extension of betrayal. Why does a government want to sniff after user data suddenly and make it a law?
- xtiansimon 6mo agoI heard this on the radio this morning. The NPR story reported the danger as individual’s PII can be combined through the power of AI. I remarked how curious it is that wondrous AI should be the technology people need to experience before they can imagine the dangers of Data Brokers and the Mother Of All Databases (MOAD).
- neoCrimeLabs 6mo agoI expected years ago that the government, at some point, would realize if they are interested in the data that they could purchase, other nation states would be as well and could use it against us. Therefore the logical conclusion would be to declare collection and sale of such data to be a matter of national security and strongly restrict it as such. The detail I failed to understand at the time was just how much money there is in data collection and brokerage.
- lukan 6mo agoThe other detail you missed was, that this world is mostly not run by sane governments that do the rational thing you would expect from them.
- JKCalhoun 6mo agoDo we have a list of who is doing the selling? (Directly and indirectly.)
- axegon_ 6mo agoHot take: It's about to become a lot more common and as strange as it may sound, I don't blame governments nor corporations - the people are to blame. Everyone with a functioning brain saw that coming decades ago: If the long haired 12 year old punk, that I was in the early 2000s, could see a problem, chances are, you don't need to have 20 PhDs to figure it out either. But most people ignored it and carried on sharing every single thing about them 24/7. I have a friend who is furious about it now and when I call him out, being constantly on facebook/instagram/whatever, he still refuses to accept that it's his fault. His argument is that he needs it cause he has a music band. Here's the kicker: he's had multiple over the nearly 2 decades that we've known each other. And the reality is, he's never made any living or money out of it and acknowledges that he never will and he's only doing it for fun while investing his own money into what is effectively a hobby. He's made a couple of hundred bucks at most and much of those have been from close friends of his as a form of support and personally in my case purely out of support since the music he makes is not my cup of tea. And yet, every time he farts, he posts it on some social media. "I'm sure we are not far being tracked on the roads and if we exceed the speed limit by 2km, we get a fine instantly". I'm genuinely starting to think that people are not capable of making the connection between cause and effect. Best case scenario, they see those as a coincidence. A few weeks ago I logged into linkedin from an anonymous account and I was horrified: random posts from people I've never heard of: "We created the best performing AI that can do {something}. Comment on this post and we will give you an early access to our product." And dozens of comments underneath, as you might have thought. The company - one 19 year old kid running a node frontend on vercel. First comment - from a marketing manager at some FAANG. If this is not a sign that we are cooked, I don't know what is. People keep sharing everything they do online, rely on cloud based llms which clearly collect their information. And everyone and their dog understands that AI companies operate at huge losses and promises they will never be able to fulfill. Sooner or later the investors will start asking questions. Governments are in this bizarre place where they are part of this on two fronts. At large because governments are lead by people in their 60's and 70's and have no goddamn clue what AI is beyond magic that can do anything (or so they are made to believe). So they are pouring money into AI companies to do some ridiculous tasks for them, while also pouring money into collecting data. To their minds, it's probably "we have the data and we have access to the all-seeing and all-knowing ai". And while that is happening, sloppers ask that same AI to write their code, where to buy dinner, use it as a therapist, relationship consultant and all that, adding more highly personal data into the bag of data that should remain personal. Forget how bad corporations have been at preventing data leaks. When the investors start knocking on the door, asking for their money and a government asking for a JSON containing your medical records, private information and whatnot, guess who won't think twice about it and happily take the briefcase full of cash. Ultimately, Idiocracy was supposed to be a comedy, not a documentary but here we are.
- hustleracer 6mo ago[flagged]
- techteach00 6mo agoWhich is why Mazda torments me and disables my ability to remote start my car without "connected services" app installed on my phone. I've said this ad nauseam, but their TOS says they sell to 3rd parties including law enforcement and insurance companies. Nobody cares though. Main point. Like 80% of the public have no idea or interest knowing what connected services does. If you tell them. They still don't care (my parents).
- LurkandComment 6mo agoI am a big personal privacy advocate. However, I'm also well aware of how much crime is happening online and on signals that don't sit clearly in public and private channels. If you worked with this stuff like I do, you'd understand gov't and le needs more regualted and responsible access to this data. At the same time, if you're in Brazil (FE) there is no need for Facebook to comply to your warrant request. So how do you stop romance scams, coordinated trafficking, everything that happens there (BTW META is a HUGE platform for this stuff) So sometimes, your only way access data is through purchasing it.
- eeixlk 6mo agoSo the US federal government will combat romance scams by violating random citizens privacy when it cant stop the president from conducting stock market manipulation scams on twitter? Institutional trust needs to be earned and maintained.
- kaleinator 6mo ago> So the US federal government will combat romance scams by violating random citizens privacy when it cant stop the president from conducting stock market manipulation scams on twitter? Institutional trust needs to be earned and maintained. Additionally, we expect the government to respect any laws or acts when the current administration seems to be ignoring most of it? Literally why do people even think the government needs to "BUY" data??? They can get it regardless and nobody is really there to stop them until things change.
- _slih 6mo agoFBI director was asked point blank if he'd commit to not buying Americans' location data. he said no.
- kaleinator 6mo agoPeople talk about this as if Snowden and the NSA stuff way back meant nothing. Why the hell would they need to BUY your data? They're the US Government ffs. They have, and they will, demand that data from companies regardless of financial compensation. These articles don't seem to convey that very well.
- panavinsingh 6mo ago[flagged]