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The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

theintercept.com

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Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#51

Post by [deleted] »

Sevastopol wrote: post #29
AlexandrB wrote: post #9

This is not a new take, but I think "the west" is effectively building their own version of China's social credit. It's just distributed among a range of private companies and accessed via subpoena or contract. The fact that the government doesn't operate most of it directly is largely irrelevant to those negatively affected by it and in some ways makes the situation worse (who do you even contact to correct inaccura…

> "the west" is effectively building their own version of China's social credit. China's social credit system allegedly assigns (or will assign?) all citizens scores and punishes them for social wrongdoings. The IRS has always been tasked with auditing and catching tax cheats, the Treasury always went after people who violate economic sanctions. What's the similarity other than data collection?

[deleted]

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#52

Post by Zak »

smallerfish wrote: post #35

a) Both contracts are tiny ($150k each) although obviously these may be pilot programs. b) Finding evaders of sanctions seems like it should fall under a national security agency's purvue. We all take it for granted that the NSA could pinpoint our locations pretty easily, right? One thing that's particularly insane about the US government is how many departments have intelligence agencies. Obviously the ideal would b…

> We all take it for granted that the NSA could pinpoint our locations pretty easily, right?

In the same way we take it for granted that a SWAT team could kill any of us pretty easily. They have (and probably should have) the ability, but the authority to use it should be very limited and subject to stringent oversight.

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#53

Post by pfortuny »

alksjdalkj wrote: post #12
nostromo wrote: post #8

We need a Supreme Court ruling or law that says if the government doesn’t have a warrant to collect your data, they also can’t buy it from third parties. We also need privacy protections so these companies wouldn’t exist in the first place.

If a private company can buy the data why shouldn't the government be able to? The real solution is to not allow the data to be sold to anyone.

Because the Government has a strictly limited power: it is subsidiary.

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#54

Post by mywittyname »

mc32 wrote: post #31
tehjoker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until the US public finds out about the concept of a credit score (new in the 1980s).

Credit score for ghee most part tries to assure lenders you can repay your debts. Social credit score is about how close you hew to proscribed behavior at large.

Credit scores are used as a proxy for Ideal Citizenship. It just so happens to have baked into it enough plausible deniability as to not run afoul of anti-discrimination laws.

Turns out, a lot of "bad" actions result in missed bill payments.

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#55

Post by artificialLimbs »

kelnos wrote: post #46
travoc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need more similarities? The mass data collection completes the system.

Because we need to understand the purpose of the data collection and what bad things might happen because of it. If Treasury is using this data to catch people who violate economic sanctions, ok. If the IRS is using this data to catch people who cheat on their taxes, ok. I don't love either of those things, but they are using the data only to do things that have been defined as their job to do for a long time now. Th…

>> There doesn't seem to be any evidence that any of this data is going to be used to penalize people financially/economically for "social infractions"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#56

Post by kelnos »

AlexandrB wrote: post #9

This is not a new take, but I think "the west" is effectively building their own version of China's social credit. It's just distributed among a range of private companies and accessed via subpoena or contract. The fact that the government doesn't operate most of it directly is largely irrelevant to those negatively affected by it and in some ways makes the situation worse (who do you even contact to correct inaccura…

I don't think I really see evidence of this. I mean, the IRS wants to catch people who cheat on their taxes. That's something they've been empowered to do for a long time. And when they catch people for that, they audit them, perhaps take them to court, and fine them. Which seems reasonable.

If the IRS is going to start telling people they aren't allowed to ride trains or get on airplanes because they applied a deduction to their taxes in a way that's not allowed, then we should worry; that sounds like the China-style social credit system people talk about. But I don't see that as being realistic; the IRS doesn't have that kind of power.

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#57

Post by artificialLimbs »

michaelbrave wrote: post #41
mc32 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit score for ghee most part tries to assure lenders you can repay your debts. Social credit score is about how close you hew to proscribed behavior at large.

Credit score can affect employment, I.E. you can't get hired because you are too poor.

Is this actually true, or is it the case that you can't get financial related jobs because your credit score has been lowered by your past cases of poor handling of money?

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#58

Post by kelnos »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #55
kelnos wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we need to understand the purpose of the data collection and what bad things might happen because of it. If Treasury is using this data to catch people who violate economic sanctions, ok. If the IRS is using this data to catch people who cheat on their taxes, ok. I don't love either of those things, but they are using the data only to do things that have been defined as their job to do for a long time now. Th…

>> There doesn't seem to be any evidence that any of this data is going to be used to penalize people financially/economically for "social infractions" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

That's bad, but is not what we're talking about here. Not to mention it was a big scandal and that practice (which was not supported by any law or legal policy) has stopped. The China-style social credit system people worry about is something done on purpose, as designed, out in the open.

Can we stop taking isolated incidents and framing them as official policy?

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#59

Post by whimsicalism »

adventured wrote: post #44
whimsicalism wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding was it basically was providing a way to incentivize indigent people to behave the law by imposing penalties for failing to pay fines. In the US, fines are mostly meaningless if you are poor as debtor prisons are (rightfully) illegal.

> In the US, fines are mostly meaningless if you are poor as debtor prisons are (rightfully) illegal. You're overwhelmingly correct, however someone is going to shortly reply to your comment with a link to a story about how someone somewhere got jailed over a debt and how debtor prisons are making a comeback. It's extraordinarily rare in the US.

Yes, and also wage garnishment is another thing that is definitely a common thing.

Re: The U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people

#60

Post by mywittyname »

nostromo wrote: post #8

We need a Supreme Court ruling or law that says if the government doesn’t have a warrant to collect your data, they also can’t buy it from third parties. We also need privacy protections so these companies wouldn’t exist in the first place.

We can't rely on SCOTUS to make this ruling for another 50+ years, so our best hope is to start with state legislators. The majority of law enforcement happens at a state level, and most state legislators aren't as hamstrung as the federal one is, so this is the easiest way to achieve the most impactful results.

Also, POTUS is in charge of most federal law enforcement agencies. So it might be possible to handle this at a federal level through an executive order. Obviously, this doesn't have the staying power of a proper law, but it's something.

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