[HN Gopher] U.S. Spy Agencies-One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal...
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U.S. Spy Agencies-One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data
Author : LAsteNERD
Score : 122 points
Date : 2025-05-22 14:43 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| joecool1029 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/SEkrr
| sixothree wrote:
| Even if it is not this particular dataset, are there markets
| where I can get my own personal information?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| data brokers, absolute scum of the earth imo though
| amelius wrote:
| Why they aren't banned is beyond me. Well, perhaps the
| article explains it.
|
| Meanwhile, so called "privacy watchdogs" are toothless.
| advisedwang wrote:
| In general no. Databrokers are not interesting in doing retail,
| and especially not interested in transparency.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| California residents can force the data broker mafia to
| delete their records.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| 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.
| ndegruchy wrote:
| So we can't dragnet surveil our own people? Hmm, how about we
| just buy it from the folks who do it for work? Then _we're_ not
| doing it. _We're_ just buying a bundle of data from a broker.
|
| Couple this with the idea that we soft-spy on our Allies and then
| trade that data for their spying on our people and yeah, wow.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| In all honesty it wouldn't even matter.
|
| If the data brokers sell data, then even if they didn't sell it
| to the government, they would sell it to "PR/Lobbying Firms"
| who lobby the government. They would sell it to "security
| contracting firms" who the government contracts with to, um,
| escort "aid" shipments to widows and orphans in places like
| Yemen or Colombia, or Nebraska. And so on and so forth.
|
| The fundamental mistake was never about the government. The
| fundamental mistake was in allowing the data brokers to exist,
| collect, and sell the data in the first place.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| And once there is a cottage industry in place and money is
| rolling, any attempt to adjust by privacy conscious portion
| of the population will be neutered or overruled by aggressive
| lobbying. And that is assuming the amoral entities having
| access to all that data won't attempt to use it to put a
| finger on a scale.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| And the lobbying dollars will go twice as far because the
| existence of the industry benefits the government. Whereas
| a normal industry has to fight an uphill lobbying battle
| where the courts and enforcers and legislators extract the
| maximal pound of flesh at every step the government will
| bend over backward to make it go easy for the privacy
| invasion industry.
|
| The only ways these status quos change is when people hate
| the industry so much that being in bed with it threatens
| the reelection of the politicians and the legitimacy of the
| institutions can the tide shift.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| So true.
|
| It's so clear to me now that it was foolish to go after
| the government for what was, at root, a problem emanating
| from private industry practices. That was unimaginably
| dumb. It's clear the issue was obviously the private
| industry practices the whole time. Those practices are
| what we should have been trying to stamp out from the
| start.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Tyranny can always come to you. All you can do is try to be
| prepared.
| sockp0pp3t wrote:
| Like a number of NGOs, this is another example of US Federal Govt
| breaking the law by proxy, i.e. paying private orgs to break the
| law for them.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Third party doctrine is what they abuse to do this.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| 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.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| "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 the
| normalization of it, is another attack on a democratic pillar.
|
| It really does seem like structural cracks are widening
| rapidly. I too hope that our current realities cause a sort of
| 'wake up' to occur in the minds of those whom are too busy,
| deep in "my team" politics or otherwise not concerned about
| what's going on right now.
| davidw wrote:
| The media does plenty of shooting itself in their own feet
| though. There was tons of coverage of Jake Tapper's book
| taking time away from everything that is happening right now.
| willcipriano wrote:
| The book about how the media covered up the president's
| decline?
| abridges6532 wrote:
| Tapper was like #1 in the coverup lmao
| davidw wrote:
| If it was such a big deal, why did they wait to publish
| it in a book about a guy who will never see elected
| office again? They do this a lot and it damages their
| credibility.
|
| Also, the current guy is not exactly that sharp, or
| improving with age, either. But age seems to no longer be
| of interest to the press.
| gosub100 wrote:
| It's never limited to a single administration.
| toss1 wrote:
| 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.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I'll happily stop both-sides-ing it when people stop
| emphasizing "the current administration" when it's not
| relevant to the topic. Your guy lost, learn from your
| mistakes and carry on. Or criticize both presidents
| equally. If you criticized Biden in his tenure it was
| still Trump's fault. Believe me, I tried. It's Logical
| nonsense.
| exceptione wrote:
| > I'll happily stop both-sides-ing it when
|
| No, you unconditionally need to stop both-siding. When
| you want to bring a broader issue in the spotlight, do
| bring the broader issue in the spot light. But when you
| feel you are inclined to throw in a bothsidism, which is
| a negative sum contribution to discourse, then the chance
| that you actually have an insight on the broader issue is
| quite small.
|
| > Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on
|
| As a bystander I can say on behalf of the ones that have
| been "othered" by means of political marketing, there is
| no guy. The pressing issue at play is the rule of law,
| separation of powers, due process, fair elections, and
| basic respect for human rights. If anyone feels they
| should continue to shout while waiving the merchandise of
| their favorite team, if anyone thinks this is the right
| moment to continue behaving like a spoiled hooligan, then
| they lose the aforementioned basic prerequisites of
| democracy, and with that, the democratic constitutional
| state.
| kurikuri wrote:
| > Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on.
| Or criticize both presidents equally.
|
| So, your solution here is for people who think the
| current administration is particularly bad to either not
| complain or accept any whataboutisms you have?
|
| Your 'both administrations' quip is a vacuous
| justification for the current administration's actions.
| If this is the basis for your justification, then,
| regardless of the truth of your claim, you'd be
| inconsistent to then praise this specific administration
| for anything positive. Thus, outside of nihilist
| generalizations about the overall structure of the US,
| you can't meaningfully contribute to this conversation.
| Without giving a positive justification for the
| administrations behavior, your contributions are 'logical
| nonsense.'
|
| I'd rather simply complain about the doublespeakers in
| office at the moment and say it is wrong to do so, and
| there is no 'logical nonsense' in that.
| ivewonyoung wrote:
| Is my reading of your comment accurate? If not please let
| us know.
|
| "The party not in power also has been doing similar
| things(in regards to the article) if not worse over the
| past couple of decades but lets completely ignore that,
| not criticize them at all, don't even bring it up and
| blame only the current admin because...<party currently
| in power is baddd>"
| beej71 wrote:
| I'm not the parent, but that seems like a pretty bad
| misread.
|
| But to answer, you worry more about the guy waving a
| knife in your face than other people who have knives and
| may have waved them in your face in the past.
|
| I'm curious what the worse one is. The Clipper Chip?
| Seems like a light pleasantry compared to what's
| happening now.
| zzrrt wrote:
| I've been wondering lately why they told us about "flood the
| zone" and published Project 2025. Is it because they don't
| have regular communication with every person who is willing
| and able to employ these strategies, so they just communicate
| them in the open?
| xeonmc wrote:
| Humanity needs a lesson that would be remembered in their
| bones.
| glial wrote:
| For a generation
| nancyminusone wrote:
| That's strontium-90, but can we really say we've learned
| the associated lesson?
| gxs wrote:
| If WWI with a followup WWII reminder hasn't done it, not sure
| what will
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >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.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >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.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| The fact that institutions can be corrupt (or corrupted)
| doesn't invalidate the concept of an institution. Humans
| must coordinate their efforts to have widespread impact,
| and institutions are the de-facto way to coordinate
| effort: from marriage, the nuclear family, and extended
| families to local clubs, churches, companies, non-
| profits, and governments at various levels.
|
| Ever since the counter-culture movement of the 1960s,
| it's been cool to "stick it to the man", which
| unfortunately translates to anti-institutionalism too
| often. Tearing things down never yields a positive result
| when no good institutions exist or are created to fill
| the vacuum.
| maigret wrote:
| Institutions are not corrupt, people are. Corrupt people
| like to blame the problems onto institutions, that serves
| them well.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Yes and no. Corrupt leaders corrupt institutions. But for
| large enough institutions, institutionalized corruption
| tends to transcend the corruption (or lack thereof) of
| its current leaders.
|
| At that scale, it takes a lot of power, courage, and
| integrity for a leader to reform the institution. Power
| itself can be a corrupting influence when too much is
| vested onto a single person -- hence the necessity of
| integrity.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Institutions and organizations ought not to be
| architected in a manner that makes them useful to the
| corrupt. This is the defining failure of 20th century
| western governments. They were so "all in" and had so
| much public support they shape shifted themselves into
| these things that are magnets for the corrupt and self
| serving (and arguably tempt their leaders to become those
| things).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It did it; for two generations.
|
| On the specific issue of internal surveillance and its
| abuses, that is laughable, given the way that accelerated
| after WWII, with no substantial attempt at checking it
| until some fairly limited reforms were adopted in the
| 1970s after the Nixon-era abuses, with those restrictions
| being fairly flagrantly ignored (and formally weakened)
| after 9/11.
| rxtexit wrote:
| You mean the same people that built the CIA and NSA?
|
| You are literally talking about the founders of the
| surveillance state.
| diggan wrote:
| 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.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| The mighty CIA, unable to protect the military industrial
| complex. Until further notice, the spy agencies do nothing but
| rainmaking the American public.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| I think "rainmaking" isn't the right word here.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| rainmade is the act itself, what is the past to present
| version of this ?
| timewizard wrote:
| The CIA doesn't want to. It's more profitable to sell it out.
| stevetron wrote:
| 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.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| When have the foreign and domestic intel agencies ever
| respected their own or anyone else's charter?
| m3047 wrote:
| > 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.
| timewizard wrote:
| I don't know of any strategy that uses GPS location to decide
| when to switch between towers. A tower could be offline for
| maintenance. You're probably going to want to use the signal
| strength from the tower as the strongest indicator of
| switching.
|
| Aside from that ENodeB uses GPS for timing. At the base
| station. In a way that does not require your phone to _also_
| have GPS.
| jmkni wrote:
| There is an irony here that the first thing you see when you open
| this article is a prompt for your email address
| cornhole wrote:
| I would be more accepting about my personal data being bought if
| I got paid for it
| TimeToBuild1 wrote:
| Nice one
| webdoodle wrote:
| Citizen's United broke the news media, by turning it into a pay
| per influence business, instead of journalism. Where are the Ida
| Tarbell's of our time? Most of them have been throttled, censored
| or completely suspended from most of the social media that they
| built up over the years, by the same rich parasitic influences
| that broke Citizen's United.
|
| Want to do something about it? Come to the Billionaire's
| SummerCamp in Sun Valley, Idaho on July 6th, and complain to the
| rich parasites themselves.
|
| Protest! Civil Disobedience! Justice!
|
| Or just got back to watching YouTube and delude yourself into
| thinking it will fix itself.
| nkh wrote:
| If I wanted to buy the data on myself to see what these brokers
| have. Is that possible? If so, Where should I go next?
| mmh0000 wrote:
| You can start here: https://www.experian.com/small-
| business/target-prospects
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(page generated 2025-05-22 23:02 UTC)