A surprise disclosure of a national security threat by the House Intelligence chair was part of an effort to block legislation that aimed to limit cops and spies from buying Americans' private data.
TLDR: privacy law won’t pass because it would limit the government’s right to buy “commercially available data” on anyone without a warrant
This includes location data collected from cell phones that are capable in many cases of tracking people’s physical whereabouts almost constantly. The data is purportedly gathered for advertising purposes…
A government that actually cares about privacy wouldn’t be debating ‘should we be able to buy that data’, it would be asking the real question ‘why the fuck is it legal to collect and sell that data?’
Even if we pretend that data will only ever be used for ads, it’s still not fucking OK for advertisers to stalk everyone everywhere 24/7 (and every use other than ad stuff is probably worse)
TLDR: privacy law won’t pass because it would limit the government’s right to buy “commercially available data” on anyone without a warrant
A government that actually cares about privacy wouldn’t be debating ‘should we be able to buy that data’, it would be asking the real question ‘why the fuck is it legal to collect and sell that data?’
Even if we pretend that data will only ever be used for ads, it’s still not fucking OK for advertisers to stalk everyone everywhere 24/7 (and every use other than ad stuff is probably worse)