alt Hacker NewsThat's the job of the FBI - to investigate domestic crimes. But, why do private organizations so willingly participate in the tracking ecosystem? I suppose they're in the, "you have nothing to worry about if you're not doing anything illegal" camp! Hopefully they understand that they have the most to lose.
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No it is not the job of the FBI to to conduct mass surveillance of citizens.
For profit organizations are legally required to maximize shareholder value. Many of them will abuse the spirit of the law in order to squeeze profits where others won’t.
The FBI is violating the spirit and original intent of the 4A by creating an entire industry out of the “3rd party doctrine” bypass to the 4A. That doctrine was whole cloth created by SCOTUS and Congress has been too happy to avoid credit or blame for it to not enshrine it in statute.
If something is bad when it's done illegally, it's worse when it's done legally, and even worse than that when it's done dutifully.
It's also not new. The FBI has kept dossiers on people of interest and people in positions of power since it was founded. Easier now of course, which is a concern.
Lemme give you an example.
Many retail sites have a "find a nearby" store function. They often outsource this to a third party...for something as silly as geolocation and geographical lookups. This third party is the one that offers its services for a discount but also siphons up your location data to sell.
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It's just business. Buy (your data) for a dollar, sell for two. It's all legal and the data brokers are mostly unknown or already-hated companies so I'd say they have nothing to lose.