Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Snowden's "Permanent Record" is an interesting read, but at the end he seemed to view a transition from the government collecting and storing data on individuals to the private sector collecting and holding that data as some kind of positive event. It's really not any different, and neither entity is 100% secure against data theft and exposure.

Corporations and governments have an obsession with tracking individuals, although probably for different reasons (profits and tax collection being the main goals, I imagine, with 'social credit score' as a newer more dystopian concept). This is well-documented in the US and no doubt applies to NZ as well:

> "As we have documented at The Privacy Issue, pacts with U.S. intelligence are a mix of cooperation with, and infiltration by, three-letter agencies. Though nearly every major Big Tech company has cooperated with the NSA's surveillance programs in some way, the Google cloud was notably backdoored via clandestine means that were likely unknown to the company, with NSA agents gleefully bragging about the infiltration in an internal presentation."

https://theprivacyissue.com/government-surveillance/battle-c...

New Zealand is a member of the so-called Five Eyes Collective so the NSA likely has full access to all personal data of New Zealanders, let alone everyone else in the region:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/05/new-zealand-...

> he seemed to view a transition from the government collecting and storing data on individuals to the private sector collecting and holding that data as some kind of positive event. It's really not any different,

Isn't it different?

At worst, companies like Walmart, Google, and Amazon are creepy in using any information they can collect to try to sell you useless products.

At worst, the government can use any data they collect about you to throw you in a metal cage for life, take your kids away from you, drone strike you, steal your money, inject you with drugs without your consent, execute you, etc.

One is a mere annoyance. The other is a direct threat to your life, liberty, and property.

Facebook will hand over your data to the government without a warrant. These billion dollar companies have become another way for state to surveil us.

> One is a mere annoyance. The other is a direct threat to your life, liberty, and property.

Yes, but these are not compartmentalized how they should be.

The government has some limits on what data they can gather/store on you (mostly it seems these limits are respected less and less, but at least they exist and you have some chance to fight for them in court on constitutional grounds).

Private industry has no such limits. So they gather everything. But there are also no limits to how they can resell your private data, so a lot of it is resold to.. the government. Which gives a clean backdoor to bypassing those pesky limits.

Unless proven otherwise, you should assume that any of your private personal data gathered by private industry is also likely being passed on to the government.

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