U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data
56 comments
·May 22, 2025WarOnPrivacy
nicholasjarnold
"Flood the zone" => The specific strategy put forth and now enacted by the current US admin in order to overwhelm the media's ability to cover issues and therefore by extension the ability for the public at large to keep themselves informed. It's a fundamental attack on one of the pillars of democracy. Mental bandwidth saturation is a feature here, not a bug.
Additionally, the gradual removal of personal privacy, and the normalization of it, is another attack on a democratic pillar.
It really does seem like structural cracks are widening rapidly. I too hope that our current realities cause a sort of 'wake up' to occur in the minds of those whom are too busy, deep in "my team" politics or otherwise not concerned about what's going on right now.
zzrrt
I’ve been wondering lately why they told us about “flood the zone” and published Project 2025. Is it because they don’t have regular communication with every person who is willing and able to employ these strategies, so they just communicate them in the open?
yeahokbut
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davidw
The media does plenty of shooting itself in their own feet though. There was tons of coverage of Jake Tapper's book taking time away from everything that is happening right now.
willcipriano
The book about how the media covered up the president's decline?
gosub100
It's never limited to a single administration.
toss1
That is trivially true, but stop both-sides-ing it with false equivalency.
At this point, the major party in power is doing all they can to undermine democracy and strip-mine the country for their own benefit and that of their few multi-billionaire sponsors.
The other party is attempting to herd a broad coalition of people to maintain democracy.
Yes, it is imperfect, and the country has fallen often far short of perfection through it's entire history.
That is no reason to set the perfect as the enemy of the good. Simply declaring "every form of government is (or all parties are) awful" is a cop-out, and the logical conclusion of that is a complete power vacuum which leads only to the population being ruled by rival gangs & fiefdoms.
xeonmc
Humanity needs a lesson that would be remembered in their bones.
diggan
One would think the Snowden Leaks was that moment, that was the moment I'll never forget personally. Basically most of what we thought were crazy conspiracy theories was confirmed by multiple independent journalist organizations to be true.
glial
For a generation
nancyminusone
That's strontium-90, but can we really say we've learned the associated lesson?
gxs
If WWI with a followup WWII reminder hasn't done it, not sure what will
ramesh31
>If WWI with a followup WWII reminder hasn't done it, not sure what will
It did it; for two generations. The GI's and the Silents were the most civic minded generations we ever had. But those were our grandparents (or great grandparents) now, and living memory has finally faded. Here's hoping it doesn't take another Passchendaele or Hiroshima to reignite it.
decremental
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ndegruchy
So we can't dragnet surveil our own people? Hmm, how about we just buy it from the folks who do it for work? Then _we're_ not doing it. _We're_ just buying a bundle of data from a broker.
Couple this with the idea that we soft-spy on our Allies and then trade that data for their spying on our people and yeah, wow.
bilbo0s
In all honesty it wouldn't even matter.
If the data brokers sell data, then even if they didn't sell it to the government, they would sell it to "PR/Lobbying Firms" who lobby the government. They would sell it to "security contracting firms" who the government contracts with to, um, escort "aid" shipments to widows and orphans in places like Yemen or Colombia, or Nebraska. And so on and so forth.
The fundamental mistake was never about the government. The fundamental mistake was in allowing the data brokers to exist, collect, and sell the data in the first place.
iugtmkbdfil834
And once there is a cottage industry in place and money is rolling, any attempt to adjust by privacy conscious portion of the population will be neutered or overruled by aggressive lobbying. And that is assuming the amoral entities having access to all that data won't attempt to use it to put a finger on a scale.
potato3732842
And the lobbying dollars will go twice as far because the existence of the industry benefits the government. Whereas a normal industry has to fight an uphill lobbying battle where the courts and enforcers and legislators extract the maximal pound of flesh at every step the government will bend over backward to make it go easy for the privacy invasion industry.
The only ways these status quos change is when people hate the industry so much that being in bed with it threatens the reelection of the politicians and the legitimacy of the institutions can the tide shift.
null
jmkni
There is an irony here that the first thing you see when you open this article is a prompt for your email address
advisedwang
[flagged]
alex1138
I am getting really tired of HN whataboutism (not exactly whataboutism in this case but close) as in the GP comment
sockp0pp3t
Like a number of NGOs, this is another example of US Federal Govt breaking the law by proxy, i.e. paying private orgs to break the law for them.
arminiusreturns
Third party doctrine is what they abuse to do this.
nkh
If I wanted to buy the data on myself to see what these brokers have. Is that possible? If so, Where should I go next?
stevetron
Interesting.
This was supposedly in the _charter_ of the department of homeland security. It was supposed to be the controller of all intelligence (all agencies to dump their databases together), from all the spy agencies to prevent the intentional use-case of employing jumbo jet planes as weapons of mass destruction. And forcing all cell phones of every design every where to have GPS. Seems a little bit slow.
m3047
> And forcing all cell phones of every design every where to have GPS.
Cell phones need some kind of accurate-enough (GPS is arguably overkill) self-locating ability, because the encryption properties of the modulation make passive transmitter location and ranging determination difficult: they need to know when to switch between cell towers (ENodeB).
Wiener functions are cool, and the RADAR applications were top secret during WW II.
potato3732842
When have the foreign and domestic intel agencies ever respected their own or anyone else's charter?
cornhole
I would be more accepting about my personal data being bought if I got paid for it
lenerdenator
Tyranny can always come to you. All you can do is try to be prepared.
sixothree
Even if it is not this particular dataset, are there markets where I can get my own personal information?
jandrewrogers
This is not a retail industry. Companies are created for the specific customers they intend to serve. I can't imagine there being enough revenue to justify creating a company for retail customers, you'd have to deal with a company like Lexis-Nexis. Many of these companies don't know the identity of the people to which the data pertains.
advisedwang
In general no. Databrokers are not interesting in doing retail, and especially not interested in transparency.
kevin_thibedeau
California residents can force the data broker mafia to delete their records.
micromacrofoot
data brokers, absolute scum of the earth imo though
amelius
Why they aren't banned is beyond me. Well, perhaps the article explains it.
Meanwhile, so called "privacy watchdogs" are toothless.
TimeToBuild1
Nice one
webdoodle
Citizen's United broke the news media, by turning it into a pay per influence business, instead of journalism. Where are the Ida Tarbell's of our time? Most of them have been throttled, censored or completely suspended from most of the social media that they built up over the years, by the same rich parasitic influences that broke Citizen's United.
Want to do something about it? Come to the Billionaire's SummerCamp in Sun Valley, Idaho on July 6th, and complain to the rich parasites themselves.
Protest! Civil Disobedience! Justice!
Or just got back to watching YouTube and delude yourself into thinking it will fix itself.
Over 30y I've learned that surveillance overreach by Govs never stops or even slows down. Only reporting by the press does.
I'm hoping that a historically overt, abusive administration will kick news orgs out of their default complacency - and that they'll take surveillance seriously again. For a time.
That said, I am sympathetic that mental bandwidth is a real issue ATM.