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Comment by yaix | Hacker News Reader

> Why should Mark Zuckerberg, et al., know things about you that the government shouldn't?

1. Because the user decided to give their own info to FB, but not to the gov.

2. The gov has many more powers than FB. If FB knows something about you that "may be suspicious" they can't put you in jail for it, maybe even without a trial.

3. If some FB employee is able to steal data, it would have bad consecuences for the FB stock, so there is probably all kinds of barriers in place to stop employees to do just that. If some bureaucrat manages to sell off you data there is no consecuene for them.

etc.

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> Because the user decided to give their own info to FB, but not to the gov.

This is not quite true. Facebook can make profiles even on people that don't have facebook and that have never logged in to facebook.

The tracking works just fine on a per-browser level. The practical upshot of this is that there is a good chance that facebook has data on you from before you joined and is able to track you after you leave.

1. You also chooose your participation in government. 2. Right, so because Mr. Z. et al., don't have a 'license to kill', there is a difference. This is the only difference. 3. Which do you trust more, McDonalds or Congress?

>1. You also chooose your participation in government.

If I don't want to be subjected to any country's taxes or laws, let me know how I can opt-out of this. You can relocate to a different country, but it is up to them to allow you to enter and/or settle, so the problem hasn't been circumvented.

On the other hand, I can choose to not have a Facebook account, and can use various browser plugins to stonewall their efforts to track me on the web.

>You can relocate to a different country, but it is up to them to allow you to enter and/or settle

so don't relocate to a different country

>Which do you trust more, McDonalds or Congress?

The question is, trust more to do what? Not kill or imprison innocent people on a mass scale? I'm going to go with McDonalds on that one. But I wouldn't eat their food -- and notice that I have the choice not to.

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