Comment by throwawayqqq11
13 hours ago
There is another looming threat of modern day surveilance: previously hidden correlations.
The data you found benign sharing in the past might allow unpleasant conclusions in the future and might not even come from you personally. Think about what toys you bought for your kids, or in what college milieu your worldview developed.
"Using metadata to find Paul Revere", a what-if of the American revolution.
https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
This is a myth that continues to be propagated. Using previously unobservable correlations is a bedrock concept in Federal investigations in the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
And making it easier, better, faster, and more common isn't going to be a good thing. Reminding us that this already happens in smaller scale isn't really adding anything helpful considering the entire goal is to prevent it happening more in the future.