Government agencies buy commercial data about Americans in bulk

Netzpolitik.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-verschle... Broader article about their research into the databroker topic: https://netzpolitik.org/2024/databroker-files-die-grosse-dat... Wired article for English speakers: 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.

I 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.

Buying 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.

The 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!!!

For 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-con...

Not 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.

FBI director was asked point blank if he'd commit to not buying Americans' location data. he said no.

This 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.

Listen, 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.

I 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).

Which 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).

Do we have a list of who is doing the selling? (Directly and indirectly.)

People 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.

I remember term "privacy laundering" and "surveillance capitalism".

Example 2019 article https://www.lawfareblog.com/facebook-encryption-and-dangers-...

In reality nothing new.

It 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?

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Hot 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.

I 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.