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Comment by api

8 hours ago

I don't think the two topics are separable. This is a specific case of the general trend.

> don't think the two topics are separable. This is a specific case of the general trend

They are and should be separable. DHS hoovering up government data is orthogonal to private data collection. They could become related. But they aren’t, and muddling a hypothetical problem with a clear, present and actual one is a good way to normalize the latter.

  • The should be separable, but they are not. Data collected privately absorbed by the government is a serious problem, even anonymized data can be de-anonymized if you can put more than one database next to each other. This allows for far more insights than any single database could give you and this is a real danger.

    Keep in mind that DOGE made off with a huge stash of data, which combined with other data, such as voter registration data, twitter messages (public and private) and other such datastores could become an extremely efficient tool in messing with elections. The whole system is predicated on that being hard and so we trust the outcome of elections but with todays tools in the hands of the large US companies currently in cahoots with the Trump administration this is childs play.

    • > Data collected privately absorbed by the government is a serious problem

      The data we’re talking about here are home addresses. HHS (or the IRS) having home addresses isn’t what most Americans would or should consider problematic.

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