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Comment by Andersos | Hacker News Reader

Privacy in the US is dead

Privacy in the world is dead (more precisely, dying), for all intents and purposes. The technological cat that enabled its demise can't be put back into the bag. Currently the problem is that certain classes of people have more access to "private" information than others, but once that goes away society will adapt to the new normal and look back with confusion at why we were so concerned about not being able to hide things.

Agreed. But, we're missing the point quibbling about search histories and emails... That's nothing compared to what's coming. The data already exists to track your every move. It's just a matter of consolidating and organizing it. Right now, there is money to be made selling customer data for marketing and the like. This keeps the repositories of our data from sharing with one another.

But, soon, the economics will flip. And, there will be money to be made from selling privacy. For instance, assume all credit card, phone, cable companies, etc. pool their data. For a monthly subscription, this conglomerate will keep your info (or parts of it) hidden. The default will be everything is knowable about everyone, except for those who pay a fee to erase info from their records.

Far more money to be made selling privacy than selling info. 4th amendment and all the rest is moot. Our info is held by private international companies who, eventually, will begin charging you to keep things hidden from others.

It might be even worse. I actually doubt they'll allow you to get your info deleted, even for a fee, unless forced by law: it would only be worth it for them (as in, producing revenue that is a significant fraction of that they would be getting from selling the data) if enough people bother, but in that case, deleting their information would make the data a lot less attractive for the potential buyers...

Well, it’s not that bleak. You just need to have the knowledge to control your own privacy rather than relying on the government to have your back.

Really the bad part is that most people don’t know about or how to use technology to protect their privacy :-/

> rather than relying on the government to have your back

What's the purpose of having a government again?

Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid is 50% of the federal budget. Defense is another 17%. So the purpose of the government is mostly income redistribution and defense.

Where do your nbrs come from? https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/US_fed_spending_pie_cha...

Those numbers confirm the stats, and actually prove GP's point better (that the gov't is mostly medicare/aid, social security, and defense; half being the former, and ~22% being spent on defense), and are similar to numbers from the CBO [0]

[0] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments...

I was using the numbers for 2015. The years after that aren't significantly different.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/US_Feder...

If you've looked at the Shadow Brokers releases, Vault 7 etc., you will be reminded that, even as a privacy conscious technologist, you're still going up against PhDs with budgets of 10s of billions / yr.

...who work on this stuff as a day job, and likely also as passion projects. IOW, unless you dedicate your entire life to not being spied upon, you'll very likely "lose".

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