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points by JumpCrisscross 2 days ago | 0 comments

> US government has access to all this through various "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" agreements with the corporate data holders

These claims really need to be more specific to be believable and actionable. Particularly given the law has been changed in reaction to prior fuckery.

[–] jeffbee 2 days ago

It isn't "fuckery" as such. There's just an industry of selling dossiers on individuals, groups, or populations that is way, way more intrusive than what people imagine about online advertising, and they have been doing it for decades. It's data on the open market.

[–] the_doctah 2 days ago

OK but you seem to imply that my live location data is being streamed to NSA-like orgs

[–] Windchaser 2 days ago

I would expect that the NSA-like orgs have access to the data about where we travel, your spending habits, your comments on Reddit or HN, etc., etc. Basically, a profile on each of us. It might not be a collated readable profile as such, just a vector in a big NN describing our risk potential, but, all the same.

[–] jeffbee 2 days ago

Live state of IMEI corresponding to every cell would be technically easy. Most of the stuff that goofballs imagine the NSA doing are technically impractical or even thermodynamically impossible.

[–] JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

(Person you’re responding to isn’t OP.)

[–] the_doctah 2 days ago

Oops

[–] JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

> It isn't "fuckery" as such

§ 215 was fuckery. It was reformed [1]. (Though not repealed.)

> an industry of selling dossiers on individuals, groups, or populations

Agree. But buying reports from data brokers isn't "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" agreement. That's fuckery again.

To be clear, I'm not denying fuckery is afoot. I'm criticising throwing it out there without an evidenced allegation. Because if we have evidence of fuckery, that’s the priority. If not, it’s the data brokers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act