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Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

The more important piece highlighted by your comment is "Why should we have to?" They're the one committing crimes, in pursuit of hypothetical crimes we're not committing, and also with very little evidence that what they're doing even helps.

They've broken trust and should lose all access.

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This sounds like the mindset adopted by folks who accuse others of "victim blaming" (not saying that you accuse folks of this!)

"Why should you have to avoid dark alleys? No one should be mugging you" "Why should she have to dress modestly just because men can't keep it in their pants?"

An ideal world would be great, and it's awesome to fight for an ideal world.

But until that world arrives, it's prudent to take steps to protect yourself. That's why you lock your car after parking it.

> Why should she have to dress modestly just because men can't keep it in their pants?"

In the entire course of human history, has dressing modestly ever protected anyone from getting raped? Like a rapist is out to rape, and be like 'oh no, that's a modest woman, better find someone else'? Do women that fully conceal themselves for religious reasons not get raped?

Like even the 'everyone should have a gun' narrative makes more sence than this.

I feel like I'm missing a big event or something... What has the FBI done that's worse than what advertising companies have been doing for years?

Great point - a good threat model usually targets all companies first, such as FAANG, since they are the worst aggressors, and are well known to be leaky (data dumps of personal info are leaked almost daily now), whereas the government tends to be seemingly less leaky and have more narrow data interests, i.e. less interested in the wide array of data that companies extract from people. It's strange how often the government is the main entity discussed in privacy concerns while completely ignoring the much larger problem of corporations in that area.

> more narrow data interests,

Except that the government has instituted dragnets that effectively hoover up the data of everyone

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/effs-flagship-jewel-v-...

Much of the big events of lately are more related to mass surveillance, censorship, and election interference. Check out the Twitter Files, Russiagate, and final Durham report on Racket.news. Congress has been holding a special investigation on the weaponization of the federal government related to this but more broadly. Recently FBI admitted to having many operatives in the capitol on January 6. Then you had the recent revelation that the FBI violated rules ~280,000 times by accessing private information without a warrant. There is so much more, but whatever large centralized internet services or data brokers can gather is potentially available to government agencies.

1. What advertising companies have been abusing power too. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Plenty of examples of 3 letter agencies abusing their powers if you search.

EFF, reason.com, and the register usually make a point of reporting on it.

eg: https://www.eff.org/wp/patterns-misconduct-fbi-intelligence-...

https://reason.com/2023/05/17/the-durham-report-is-right-abo...

For example spying on (ex) girlfriends, seeing people in various state of undress (cameras in devices) etc.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/government-releases-do...

You may not realize this but, every cellphones gps is tracked and bought and sold to various companies every day. Every minute of your physical location and identity. Every ad you see, your search interests, also for sale by the petabyte. Your browsing habits, your purchases, even your social media data has likely been bought and sold. Your ISP also sells your data, likely to advertisers.

The FBI actually recently purchased a bunch of this kind of data because the governments restrictions would t allow for it any other way.

Heard of PRISM?

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