CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

It always kinda amazes me how people panic about gov data use but barely blink at the private sector doing the exact same thing… except way less transparently.

Like yeah, sure, governments collecting data deserves scrutiny. 100%. But at least in most democracies there are audits, oversight bodies, privacy commissioners, courts, access to information laws, etc. There are actual mechanisms where someone can ask “why are you doing this?” and force an answer.

Meanwhile we hand over our location, browsing habits, shopping patterns, sleep schedule, and probably our favorite pizza topping to dozens of private companies every day. Those companies can aggregate it, sell it, profile you, feed it into ad markets, train models with it, or ship it across borders… and most of the time nobody outside the company even knows it’s happening.

So yeah, data collection in general is worth debating. But the irony is wild when people lose their minds over the one place that at least has some governance and accountability, while the entire private ad-tech ecosystem is basically “trust us bro” with a 40-page terms of service nobody reads.

That location information is not available to apps or ad networks without user consent. The government can access it from the carrier with a warrant, but that's not what we're discussing here.

...and the phone itself broadcasts your position to the cell towers with remarkable accuracy, 24 hours a day.

>For years, the internet advertising industry has been sucking up our data, including our location data

For years, people have been sharing everything they do, what they do, people they spent time with, where they live.

Advertisement industry just adds more info to complete your profile, what you buy, what you watch, what you speak online, etc.

People here complain that programmers aren’t engineers because real engineers can accidentally kill people and get sued if they mess an equation up. Instead of just breaking a build or something.

I think it’s more concerning that programmers seem to have no care or shame about designing systems that works against the users’ interests. Did you share something intimate in our chat? Well it’s not E2E, moron, we have that now. How could you be this stupid?

I can’t think of another profession (except pure value extraction types) which revels in exploiting people for not having the time or care to arrange their digital lives around the booby traps that nerds set for them.