It’s actively stressful in a way that cellphones just don’t evoke.
Stress would be nice. If we felt stressed, we might vote for treatment.
I saw someone I know ranting elsewhere recently about how "nobody saw this coming" and "nobody warned us". I called him out on this, because I vividly remembered a conversation with him when he was telling me what a paranoid weirdo I was, and how self-important I was being, to assume anyone cared enough about what I had to say.
He claimed to not remember it. I found the email thread, mostly to make sure I wasn't wrong, but chose to stop responding instead.
When I worked for the government I wanted to scrape some publicly available data from the web. Because the data involved information about people I had to write up a document explaining exactly what I was using the data for, exactly what information I would be collecting and why it was necessary, explain where the data was to be stored, and most importantly specify exactly how long I needed the data and when and how it would be safely removed. This had to be approved by a privacy officer.
I was shocked, because this is data that I, as a private citizen, could easily scrape. I asked why I had to do something so involved for a project I could easily do in my spare time. The answer I got was this: Because the government has extra authority they also have extra responsibility. As government employees we have more power to impact people's lives so it is our responsibility to be very explicit is what we do and why we are doing in.
In ad-tech there are oceans of data that are not publicly available, and in the US virtually zero restriction who looks at that data and what they can do with it. I've watched people move around town via trackers when the use they web, seen where they got coffee and seen which doctor they go to. I used this information to demonstrate to the legal team at previous company to care about user privacy. They were shocked but in the end made no real policy decision. Some of the big players likely have tighter security but only for business/PR reasons. I can assure you that a random data engineer at a mid-sized tech company has far more access to your personal secrets than an FBI agent.
Don't get me wrong, there are agencies in the government that have more surveillance power than they should and it is ripe for abuse. But don't think "it's not big tech", especially since there is a ultimately a thin line between big tech and big govt.
This just sounds like a design doc, which I do regardless of if it has to get reviewed by a privacy team or I'm doing anything sensitive. Maybe it's because I've worked for mostly google & ex-googler run companies, but this is just standard practice for me.
That being said my understanding is that there were organizations that have ties back to 3 letter agencies that helped put up capital for several of the big tech companies back in the day.
Another instance of "Fuck you, I've got mine".
I also suspect there will be a point in the future where they’ll break encryption and we won’t find out until years later.. they already started looking into building a quantum computer in 2014, and I’d bet it’s not necessarily for morally acceptable research.
except this isn't even from "the intelligence agencies", it's from data brokers:
>The bulk of the data that CBP obtained came from its contract with Venntel, a location data broker that aggregates and sells information quietly siphoned from smartphone apps
You mean like flying surveillance helicopters with really, really nice gear in them over major cities for days/weeks?
Considering most data collection firms will happily sell to the feds, it's really not that much of a difference in the end.
How many kidnapping victims get found or violent plots foiled by this tech vs old school police work?
Of course I suspect this info would be hard to get. Authorities would likely cook the books to make these things look more valuable than they really are.