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View Full Version : Who watches the watchers? Big Data watches you, unchecked



Green Arrow
05-15-2014, 03:45 PM
Via Politico:


The National Security Agency might be tracking your phone calls. But private industry is prying far more deeply into your life.

Commercial data brokers know if you have diabetes. Your electric company can see what time you come home at night. And tracking companies can tell where you go on weekends by snapping photos of your car's license plate and cataloging your movements.


Private companies already collect, mine and sell as many as 75,000 individual data points on each consumer, according to a Senate report. And they're poised to scoop up volumes more, as technology unleashes a huge wave of connected devices -- from sneaker insoles to baby onesies to cars and refrigerators -- that quietly track, log and analyze our every move.

Pandora's Box.

Blackrook
05-15-2014, 05:39 PM
I'm not so worried about business tracking me. They want to sell me stuff, not put me in jail or kill me.

Peter1469
05-15-2014, 05:42 PM
I'm not so worried about business tracking me. They want to sell me stuff, not put me in jail or kill me.

But the NSA can back door into the business data centers.

Cthulhu
05-15-2014, 07:01 PM
But the NSA can back door into the business data centers.

^^This. If it were just marketing - whatever. But when the government does it for a specific purpose, I get pretty damn leery.

Blackrook
05-15-2014, 08:57 PM
There is no way to stop private enterprise from mining data except to pass laws against it, thereby creating a new government bureaucracy who's job it is to enforce these laws.

In other words, you have to get the fox to guard the chicken house.

Peter1469
05-15-2014, 09:09 PM
If enough people refused to use services that data mined, the problem would take care of itself. There are some that don't. I use StartPage as a search engine. And once they get their paid e-mail service running I will use that.