When I give talks about surveillance in Silicon Valley, techies will say, "Well, I don't care if Google gets my data to show me better ads, but the NSA is full of low-IQ sociopaths who couldn't get a job in tech."

1/

When I speak in the Beltway, govies say, "I don'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.

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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/

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're also tech companies - Oracle owns 80 data-brokerages!

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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.

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

eof/

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

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