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Comment by cjoh | Hacker News Reader

It's easy to imagine the kind of data government has, imagine its ability to process that data, and easy to interpret that they will do it. But it's also important to recognize that this is conjecture.

From my experience in government: they nailed the user experience (check out http://dsbs.sba.gov for some awesome gov UI), but really overestimated government's capacity to build intelligent technology like this.

I know this will make me unpopular amongst this crowd, but The truth is, I'm far more afraid of data like this getting into the wrong hands because it's being stored improperly or insecurely, than I am of government being malicious with it. Heck, I'm more afraid of my insurance adjuster than I am a malicious cop.

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Part of the issue with government is that you ultimately have much less recourse against the government than against anyone else. This exacerbates the potential damage the government could do with any given technology.

I think I'd be happier with the technology if the first deployment was used specifically to track police officers in an effort to weed out corrupt police. Let the program run for say 10 years, enough time to make police aware of how this sort of data can be misused by making them the victims first. As a bonus, weeding out corrupt cops will make the system safer (but not safe) for ordinary citizens.

Still, it's completely crazy. These types of system are a direct threat to democracy and need to be shut down. In fact it's worse than that. At some point a telecom is going to realize that they could make a tidy profit by selling location traffic data to third parties, and that sort of thing needs to be prevented in law.

>At some point a telecom is going to realize that they could make a tidy profit by selling location traffic data to third parties, and that sort of thing needs to be prevented in law.

The year 1990 called and wants it's comment back!

You're saying that telecoms are already selling the data? Or that there are already laws preventing the sale of such data?

They sell it. See eg Vodafone and tomtom for a publicized example.

Even if government isn't capable of building things out, they will eventually be able to buy them from third parties, likely venture-backed ones like Palantir.

Third parties have little to risk by targeting this kind of market because private companies are just as interested in exploiting customer data.

One day, we'll all be able to pore over our anyone's emails from the last 10 years from an NSA data leak posted on Piratebay. Employers, insurance companies, and ex/potential lovers will have a great time with that.

Ha! My wife reads my email anyway. (And probably does other things to spy on me too).

Would you stop wasting time on the internets and just take out the trash ? While at it, can you bring upstairs the mirror in the garage ? I may have a cookie for you.

Yeah, but without the cookie.

>It's easy to imagine the kind of data government has, imagine its ability to process that data, and easy to interpret that they will do it. But it's also important to recognize that this is conjecture. From my experience in government: they nailed the user experience (check out http://dsbs.sba.gov for some awesome gov UI), but really overestimated government's capacity to build intelligent technology like this.

That's not really the point. Even 1/10 as sophisticated technology can be equally potent, especially if they are concentrating on a person (if the data is there, they can even do the correlations manually, say in Excel. It will just take more time).

Furthermore, the creation of the technology (and even the operation) can be outsourced to private entities. Or just bought wholesale.

I fully agree. Private industry, as well as fraudsters and criminals who were somehow armed with all of this data could probably end up being far more nefarious than anything the NSA is actually doing right now.

Imagine if a Russian cybercrime gang gained access to NSA's Quantum Insert method, for example.

I mean, obviously a criminal organization having this data would be much more of issue than the government having it...

But, I don't see how that justifies the US government having the information in the first place. That's obviously not the point that you're making or agreeing with, but I feel like it's almost being implied.

"Oh well, at least it wasn't Russian cybercrime that completely and pervasively destroyed the worlds trust in our entire nations technological infrastructure", seems to be a tangential point at best to the conversation at hand.

It doesn't justify it. The NSA should be barred from further operations like this. I can think it's wrong, while still not personally fearing the NSA looking at my personal data.

Would I be right to say it isn't a lack of fear, its just a much reduced fear?

Sure. If an analyst was directly looking at web traffic and behavioral patterns of mine, I'd certainly be a bit creeped out. But in reality it's fairly unlikely to occur.

I still don't think anyone should be suspect to that (without a formal warrant), but it's just not a concern for me.

If anything, it's another reason the US government shouldn't have it ... any insecurity they create / encourage, or data trove they maintain becomes a target for the criminals (or other nations' spies) and therefore makes us all less safe.

You've obviously never met malicious police. How laughable your statement is.

I think it less about who you are more afraid of, but who you can do something about.

It's not so simple to change the government that you're under.

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