Thread by @doctorow, When I give talks about surveillance in Silicon Valley, techies will say, [...]

Cory Doctorow

doctorow

When I give talks about surveillance in Silicon Valley, techies will say, "Well, I don& #39;t care if Google gets my data to show me better ads, but the NSA is full of low-IQ sociopaths who couldn& #39;t get a job in tech."

1/

When I speak in the Beltway, govies say, "I don& #39;t care about Uncle Sam gathering data on me - the USG already knows all about me. But those grifters in Silicon Valley would sell their mothers for a nickel."

2/

What neither gets is that private surveillance is public surveillance - and vice-versa. Why do governments exercise forbearance in regulating the obviously harmful, toxic surveillance industry? Because they rely on raiding private data to do mass surveillance on a budget.

3/

Today in @wired, @jshermcyber explains how this works in exquisite detail in "Data Brokers Are a Threat to Democracy," a piece on the vast, shadowy private data brokerage industry.

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-data-brokers-are-a-threat-to-democracy/

4/">https://www.wired.com/story/opi...

Data Brokers Are a Threat to Democracy

Unless the federal government steps up, the unchecked middlemen of surveillance capitalism will continue to harm our civil rights and national security.

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-data-brokers-are-a-threat-to-democracy/

These companies - Acxiom, CoreLogic, and Epsilon - have deep dossiers on billions of people, segmented in categories like "Rural and Barely Making It" and "Ethnic Second-City Strugglers." Sometimes, they& #39;re also tech companies - Oracle owns 80 data-brokerages!

5/

These huge data-troves are raided by stalkers and spies, used to target people illegally based on race, religion and sexual orientation, and are also critical to US government surveillance.

6/

As Sherman points out, there& #39;s not much sense in getting worked up about Americans& #39; data going to China because they& #39;re on Tiktok when that same data - and more - is for sale in a vast, sleazy, unregulated smorgasbord.

eof/

ETA - If you& #39;d like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here& #39;s a link to it on http://pluralistic.net"> http://pluralistic.net , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

#axciom">https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/ #axciom">https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/1...

You can follow @doctorow.

Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: