And just to state the obvious: if you think the US is the only state actor buying up this data, or that it doesn’t include data about •you•… I don’t know what to tell you.
@weilawei@Itty53 That is all true, but that needlessly pedantic reply misses the good point that the previous post made: data brokers operating in an open market change the dynamics of what information goes where, in a way that makes an already bad situation even worse.
Those aren't purchases though, that's just sharing between governments. Purchases are from private companies, which means it's more of a marketplace anyone can buy from. FVEY isn't sharing their data with Iran, for instance. But Iran can buy the data all the same, in theory anyway.
@inthehands That's what Five Eyes is for. Bounce traffic out of the host country, have one of the other Five Eyes (AU, UK, US, Canada, NZ) countries collect it and then swap in bulk.
Gets around everyone's restrictions.
We've been through this *so many times* with them claiming no such programs exist.
@Itty53@weilawei It’s the interaction of the two that bothers me most: it seems to me that state actors •plus• private brokers can cause harm together that neither one could cause independently.
I assumed already that FVEY nations shared data. Why wouldn't allies share data? The misuse of that is a government problem of overstep, but that's pretty par for the course.
Marketplaces mean the power dynamic shifts to private hands, up to the highest bidder. That's a very different thing.