Comment by thisislife2
12 hours ago
From the comments, it appears many are not aware that even the US government buys location data of users from data brokers - How the Federal Government Buys Our Cell Phone Location Data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684 ...
We really have a societal problem in that we allow private entities to do things we don’t allow government to do. Furthermore, the issue is exacerbated by then allowing governments to bypass these issues by then just paying private entities to do the things it can’t do as a proxy for the same functional outcomes.
But we want to support privatization at all cost, even when privatization these days has significant influence on our daily lives, akin to the concerns we had when we placed restrictions on government. Seems like we need to start regulating private actions a bit more, especially when private entities accumulate enough wealth they can act like multi state governments in levels of influence. That’s my opinion, at least.
> We really have a societal problem in that we allow private entities to do things we don’t allow government to do.
Thats basically the foundational idealogy of the united states. Thats not the issue.
The real issue is your next sentence. The government can just loophole around their intentional limitations by paying private companies to work on their behalf.
It's a loophole, but it's willful by design on the government's part. The book "Means of Control" by Byron Tau covers this in great depth.
It's so much worse than even those of us who are moderately interested in mass surveillance know.
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The only private companies with this power are monopolies. Effective competition would destroy this behavior. So the real problem is the government _intentionally_ and _illegally_ allows monopolies to form so they can get access to this workaround.
> allow private entities to do things we don’t allow government to do. Furthermore, the issue is exacerbated by then allowing governments to bypass these issues by then just paying private entities to do the things it can’t do as a proxy for the same functional outcomes. <
Somehow this reminds me about Blackwater / Xe Technologies? :-/
(Im betting 100 USD that soon we will find out that ICE also deployed "private financed forces" to "support state actions"?)
>> allow private entities to do things we don’t allow government to do.
>Somehow this reminds me about Blackwater / Xe Technologies? :-/
Is there some context I'm missing? Skimming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_(company) it shows they might have perpetrated some war crimes, but that alone doesn't really make them worse than the US military. For instance, consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstri....
>We really have a societal problem in that we allow private entities to do things we don’t allow government to do.
It really isn't, given that the government literally has a monopoly on violence, and therefore it makes sense to have more guardrails for it. That's not to say private entities should have free reign to do whatever it wants, but the argument of "private entities can do [thing] that governments can't, so we should ban private entities too!" is at best incomplete.
>Furthermore, the issue is exacerbated by then allowing governments to bypass these issues by then just paying private entities to do the things it can’t do as a proxy for the same functional outcomes.
Again, this is at best an incomplete argument. The government can't extract a confession out of you (5th amendment). It can however, interview your drinking buddies that you blabbed your latest criminal escapades to. Is that the government "bypassing" the 5th amendment? Arguably. Is that something bad and we should ban? Hardly.
Your cell phone provider does not constitute "drinking buddy". The fact that, in essence, everyone is being surveilled location wise all the time by these providers is reason enough to restrict the activity.
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This is why I advocate for making selling location/identifying data illegal. If nobody is allowed to sell it then the government cannot legally buy it.
Just because the government can't buy it, doesn't mean they can't ask for it reeeeallllllly persuasively.
I agree completely with your first paragraph, but I'm not sure what privatization has to do with it. Also, I agree that more regulation of private parties is needed. Or even better, break up the private companies that are like multi-state governments in terms of power.
Why not vote for some law limiting the government’s buying of this data? After all, I expect a say in how the government is run, so that seems like the appropriate path. I don’t see why I should expect a say in how AT&T is run. AT&T can’t raise an army, or enter my house, or shoot me.
How exactly do I vote for such a law? We do not have a direct democracy, and I'm not aware of any viable political candidates that have this sort of thing as a part of their platform.
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You didn't purchase your lawmakers, the companies profiting from the bad laws did.
This is why they get their laws passed.