The NSA has admitted that it has collected personalized information on millions of Americans without warrants. They simply purchased the material from data brokers:
NSA officials told Wyden that not only is the intelligence agency purchasing data on Americans located in the US but that it also bought Americans' Internet metadata.
Wyden warned that the former "can reveal sensitive, private information about a person based on where they go on the Internet, including visiting websites related to mental health resources, resources for survivors of sexual assault or domestic abuse, or visiting a telehealth provider who focuses on birth control or abortion medication." And the latter "can be equally sensitive."
It is insane that we allow this — not the NSA purchases (though those should not be allowed either) but that the fact that sensitive information about people is avail be to the highest bidder. There is literally no benefit to this process. Better ads is not a societal benefit, at least not compared to the drawbacks. personalized information can be used to blackmail or otherwise harm individuals. It can also be used to create experiences that draw people deeper into “engagement” with toxic content or be used to drive discrimination. These businesses should flatly not be allowed to exist.
Defenders of these practices generally make two arguments. First, the benefits outweigh the harms. This, as I think I show above, is nonsense. Second, the government should not interfere with contracts between businesses and informed customers. This, too, is facile nonsense.
First, how this data is being used is not clear from the fine print in the agreements of the organizations that sell our data to data brokers. In this very case, the NSA might be helping brokers violate the law:
Wyden suggested that the intelligence community might be helping data brokers violate an FTC order requiring that Americans are provided "clear and conspicuous" disclosures and give informed consent before their data can be sold to third parties. In the seven years that Wyden has been investigating data brokers, he said that he has not been made "aware of any company that provides such a warning to users before collecting their data."
Second, the economy serves society, not the other way around. If a business’s practices are more harmful than they are helpful, then it is the obligation of the government to intervene up to and including make the business in question illegal. After all, we don’t let people sell nuclear arms on the internet, despite the Second Amendment being the only amendment our judicial system seems to think is enforceable. I could come up with a hundred other examples, and so could you. Despite libertarian dreams, markets need to be regulated for them to be free in any meaningful sense. And that means cracking down on bad actors of all kinds.
Data brokers provide no service that is remotely commensurate with the obvious and widespread harms they cause. In a rational, just economy, they would never have been allowed ot operate. In ours, they have become allowed to harm whoever they see fot for a few dollars. It is long past time to put an end to them.
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