The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens
The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens
A newly declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reveals that the federal government is buying troves of data about Americans.
Wired (https://archive.is/gsJ7I)
Of course they are.
A pertinent point that Solzhenitsyn made in Gulag Archipelago - he said that in all the time he spent in the gulags, he never once met a person who had not been legitimately convicted of a genuine crime.
The way it worked was simply that the USSR had such an extensive and nebulous set of laws that it was effectively impossible for anyone to obey all of them all the time, and so much information on all its citizens that whenever an official wanted someone disappeared, it was just a matter of checking through their records and finding which law(s) they had broken, then arresting them, trying them and convicting them.
The US oligarchy is actively pursuing the same basic strategy, and for the same basic reasons.
71Just my tin-foil hat opinion, but if anyone thinks the US is not heading towards a surveillance State on par with China, then I have a bridge to sell you.
37I don’t think that’s a tin-foil hat opinion.
12I'm guessing virtually every government in the world is surveilling and collecting data on as many people as they can. I don't think that's tinfoil at all but actually a part of the job of modern intelligence. The only (sorta) counterbalance citizens have is the concept of citizen's rights (including privacy), which may legally barely exist (if at all) in other countries.
12In Virginia you now have to show your government ID to view a porn site. Welcome to the nanny state
7I dont think they are heading towards it. They are already.
7
Fairly longwinded article on the US government buying data to skip on getting warrants.
The size and scope of the government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans' lives are described soberly and at length by the director's own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. Haines had first tasked her advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and US intelligence community members. What that report ended up saying constitutes a nightmare scenario for privacy defenders. “This report reveals what we feared most,” says Sean Vitka, a policy attorney at the nonprofit Demand Progress. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.” In the shadow of years of inaction by the US Congress on comprehensive privacy reform, a surveillance state has been quietly growing in the legal system's cracks. Little deference is paid by prosecutors to the purpose or intent behind limits traditionally imposed on domestic surveillance activities. More craven interpretations of aging laws are widely used to ignore them. As the framework guarding what privacy Americans do have grows increasingly frail, opportunities abound to split hairs in court over whether such rights are even enjoyed by our digital counterparts. “I’ve been warning for years that if using a credit card to buy an American’s personal information voids their Fourth Amendment rights, then traditional checks and balances for government surveillance will crumble,” Ron Wyden, a US senator from Oregon, says.
33Thanks 🙏🏻
2
It's already extremely easy for LE to drum up basically whatever charge and stick it to you, for the majority of citizens with no funds for a lawyer.
We've already got the plate scanners. Everytime I drive by one, my file pops as a red flag and a stop is more than likely, just to "check in" with me, usually with some false pretense like "i thought your window was cracked, my bad, but where you going tonight?" I'm not technically on paper, but I am treated as such. Easy arrest potential with some bs probable cause.
The fact that it will continue to go further doesn't surprise me. Makes the job even easier for them. If you aren't a good consumer, you will be prosecuted.
30It’s the modern day equivalent of “you’re not from around here.”
9
The hilarious part (in a bleak fashion), is I can't find many other articles discussing this.
Then everyone will panic and go crazy when someone like Trump wins and they have access to all this. History repeats.
28I can’t find many other articles discussing this.
We've known they've been doing this since at least Snowden, what's the story?
Remember that government agency that hoovers up all our data? Yeah, they're still doing that. Only they don't have to try as hard because they can just buy our info instead of snooping for it (but they're also still snooping).
Maybe it's good to remind people it's still happening because apparently everyone forgot we were told they've been doing this, for a while.
15Yes and no - prism and related programs weren't that big a deal (besides morally and legally) - the NSA was collecting far more data than they could use at scale. It was a problem, but realistically it wouldn't affect normal people - you'd have to catch a lot of attention first to even be searched in that system. It couldn't be used for law enforcement or anything wide scale - the collection was there, but the analysis didn't scale
It was a problem because of where we are now - AI advancement means not only can they now process the insane amount of data they ingest and make terrifying associations, they can use the ridiculous amount of compute they've been building out to actually use all this data
We're most of the way down the slippery slope now, and still accelerating fast. The capability makes 1984 look quaint, and having the ability to flick on systems China drools over is pretty concerning
People don't even know they're trying to make us use id to use sites "to protect the children". Any site that might be inappropriate (of which, social media fits under the current definitions of) would be responsible for children getting access to their services - storing driver's licenses seems to be the popular idea for compliance. Google's web DRM might be pushed out so fast to offer this kind of service too
Kosa has bipartisan support, the president has come out strongly supporting it, and it's insane to me that people still don't care
3Maybe it’s good to remind people it’s still happening because apparently everyone forgot we were told they’ve been doing this, for a while.
anecdotally: people chose to forget so that they don't have to change their world view. every single snowden revelations denier i know is either software engineer, network engineer, or devops
2Yes and no - prism and related programs weren't that big a deal (besides morally and legally) - the NSA was collecting far more data than they could use at scale. It was a problem, but realistically it wouldn't affect normal people - you'd have to catch a lot of attention first to even be searched in that system. It couldn't be used for law enforcement or anything wide scale - the collection was there, but the analysis didn't scale
It was a problem because of where we are now - AI advancement means not only can they now process the insane amount of data they ingest and make terrifying associations, they can use the ridiculous amount of compute they've been building out to actually use all this data
We're most of the way down the slippery slope now, and still accelerating fast. The capability makes 1984 look quaint, and having the ability to flick on systems China drools over is pretty concerning
People don't even know they're trying to make us use id to use sites "to protect the children". Any site that might be inappropriate (of which, social media fits under the current definitions of) would be responsible for children getting access to their services - storing driver's licenses seems to be the popular idea for compliance. Google's web DRM might be pushed out so fast to offer this kind of service too
Kosa has bipartisan support, the president has come out strongly supporting it, and it's insane to me that people still don't care
1
Or imagine if they were to ever get hacked.
4Hostile governments can probably just buy the data from the same data brokers the US got it from
8Or imagine if they were to ever get hacked.
I've got bad news for you . . .
7SolarWinds has entered the chat
3like they do on a VERY regular basis. Remember the NSA treasure trove of exploits that produced the wannacry fiasco?
Microsoft got blamed, when the NSA was obviously to blame.
2
I requested my data file from Lexis/Nexus several years ago, and the amount of personal data scraped from EVERYWHERE online was in it. AOL chat convos from the 90s, old, used once, throw away email addresses, pictures shared on social media. The damn thing was several inches thick and arrived in a box. We have zero privacy
22Why lie about this?
LexisNexis specializes in law (the Lexis end) and news (the Nexis end)—the data they procure and collate.
Their identity verification product, Accurint, accesses public record sources, and is imperative to keep pure. Inclusion of any private record data is a massive legal concern and actively monitored for.
You don't run a law service outfit without Legal being all up in your butt, and boy, were they.
Source: I was responsible for testing deliverables across all LN products.
16
Fwiw, this article is from June, but it did not receive enough attention, so I'm glad it's coming back
16This, and climate change, will define this era. Surveillance makes fascism so much easier.
13100% the only difference is surveillance hides in the shadows and it's easy for people to not see the effects, whereas the effects of climate change cannot be hidden. So surveillance feels way more nefarious, and climate change feels more honest about the pain is going to inflict on us
5
Just China things.
Hold up
12No, it's all ok bc money was involved.
6
Jokes on them, I'll be dead some day soon.
7I mean, we all will. But the question is how miserable will we be until then.
3I predict an unprecedented wave of suicides in about 10 years time. People who knew a nicer world (current 30-40 year olds) will ultimately understand how hopeless the future is. Younger people will break after 20-30 years of polarization, pauperisation and yearly disasters. This will overlap with natural timeline of passing away of today's 60+ year olds. Not fun times ahead.
1
Well, where else would they store dirt? It's not like you can just put it on the ground or something; on people is the only clear, reasonable choice!
1That’s what all the plastic is for, to store the dirt.
1
Lol i am.not concerned at all because whoever doesn't know about "5 eyes" should go and read about it so its just not the US.
-3Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/JsntlJZ9h1U
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
1
they're going to feed it to their agi
-4America is the evil empire and must be destroyed
-7We should try to repair it. It can be done.
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