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U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

theintercept.com

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Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#31

Post by gosub100 »

nicholasjarnold wrote: post #14
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #8

Over 30y I've learned that surveillance overreach by Govs never stops or even slows down. Only reporting by the press does. I'm hoping that a historically overt, abusive administration will kick news orgs out of their default complacency - and that they'll take surveillance seriously again. For a time. That said, I am sympathetic that mental bandwidth is a real issue ATM.

"Flood the zone" => The specific strategy put forth and now enacted by the current US admin in order to overwhelm the media's ability to cover issues and therefore by extension the ability for the public at large to keep themselves informed. It's a fundamental attack on one of the pillars of democracy. Mental bandwidth saturation is a feature here, not a bug. Additionally, the gradual removal of personal privacy, and…

It's never limited to a single administration.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#34

Post by toss1 »

gosub100 wrote: post #31
nicholasjarnold wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Flood the zone" => The specific strategy put forth and now enacted by the current US admin in order to overwhelm the media's ability to cover issues and therefore by extension the ability for the public at large to keep themselves informed. It's a fundamental attack on one of the pillars of democracy. Mental bandwidth saturation is a feature here, not a bug. Additionally, the gradual removal of personal privacy, and…

It's never limited to a single administration.

That is trivially true, but stop both-sides-ing it with false equivalency.

At this point, the major party in power is doing all they can to undermine democracy and strip-mine the country for their own benefit and that of their few multi-billionaire sponsors.

The other party is attempting to herd a broad coalition of people to maintain democracy.

Yes, it is imperfect, and the country has fallen often far short of perfection through it's entire history.

That is no reason to set the perfect as the enemy of the good. Simply declaring "every form of government is (or all parties are) awful" is a cop-out, and the logical conclusion of that is a complete power vacuum which leads only to the population being ruled by rival gangs & fiefdoms.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#35

Post by diggan »

xeonmc wrote: post #21
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #8

Over 30y I've learned that surveillance overreach by Govs never stops or even slows down. Only reporting by the press does. I'm hoping that a historically overt, abusive administration will kick news orgs out of their default complacency - and that they'll take surveillance seriously again. For a time. That said, I am sympathetic that mental bandwidth is a real issue ATM.

Humanity needs a lesson that would be remembered in their bones.

One would think the Snowden Leaks was that moment, that was the moment I'll never forget personally. Basically most of what we thought were crazy conspiracy theories was confirmed by multiple independent journalist organizations to be true.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#36

Post by ramesh31 »

gxs wrote: post #27
xeonmc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanity needs a lesson that would be remembered in their bones.

If WWI with a followup WWII reminder hasn't done it, not sure what will

>If WWI with a followup WWII reminder hasn't done it, not sure what will

It did it; for two generations. The GI's and the Silents were the most civic minded generations we ever had. But those were our grandparents (or great grandparents) now, and living memory has finally faded. Here's hoping it doesn't take another Passchendaele or Hiroshima to reignite it.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#37

Post by potato3732842 »

ramesh31 wrote: post #36
gxs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If WWI with a followup WWII reminder hasn't done it, not sure what will

>If WWI with a followup WWII reminder hasn't done it, not sure what will It did it; for two generations. The GI's and the Silents were the most civic minded generations we ever had. But those were our grandparents (or great grandparents) now, and living memory has finally faded. Here's hoping it doesn't take another Passchendaele or Hiroshima to reignite it.

>It did it; for two generations. The GI's and the Silents were the most civic minded generations we ever had

And the mass buy-in resulted in the building of systems, creating of institutions and setting of precedents that were and are being used less than civic purposes. So unfortunately I'm not sure that's sustainable either.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#38

Post by alex1138 »

advisedwang wrote: post #32
jmkni wrote: post #20

There is an irony here that the first thing you see when you open this article is a prompt for your email address

[flagged]

I am getting really tired of HN whataboutism (not exactly whataboutism in this case but close) as in the GP comment

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#39

Post by m3047 »

stevetron wrote: post #11

Interesting. This was supposedly in the _charter_ of the department of homeland security. It was supposed to be the controller of all intelligence (all agencies to dump their databases together), from all the spy agencies to prevent the intentional use-case of employing jumbo jet planes as weapons of mass destruction. And forcing all cell phones of every design every where to have GPS. Seems a little bit slow.

> And forcing all cell phones of every design every where to have GPS.

Cell phones need some kind of accurate-enough (GPS is arguably overkill) self-locating ability, because the encryption properties of the modulation make passive transmitter location and ranging determination difficult: they need to know when to switch between cell towers (ENodeB).

Wiener functions are cool, and the RADAR applications were top secret during WW II.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#40

Post by jandrewrogers »

sixothree wrote: post #3

Even if it is not this particular dataset, are there markets where I can get my own personal information?

This is not a retail industry. Companies are created for the specific customers they intend to serve. I can't imagine there being enough revenue to justify creating a company for retail customers, you'd have to deal with a company like Lexis-Nexis. Many of these companies don't know the identity of the people to which the data pertains.
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