zlacker

>>benwer+(OP)
I was once approached by a company located in a major city in Ohio. They were pitching me to come work for them but the role required getting clearance to do the work, because they were contracting for the federal government.

Without said clearance, all they could tell me was they scraped the open internet and built profiles on citizens, and then would surface this info in an easily searchable interface. I declined getting clearance and going deeper than that.

If some random ass company in Cleveland is doing contract work equivalent to the things Snowden exposed, it’s happening everywhere else, and nobody has a damn clue. This was after Snowden exposed Prism.

We’re fucked.

>>ransac+CK1
It's been going on for a long long time. Why people are only concerned about it now is probably the most surprising part for me personally. It's not like this has been a secret, there have been articles about it for years.

The stuff those profiles, etc include though, and what they try to determine about us citizens... That's for us to never know. Could be, vulnerable subjects for psychological experiments, predictions as to whether someone is a criminal, terrorist, etc, could be blackmail for purposes of gaining leverage, probably all fueled by some janky ass ML algorithms. Who knows, that's the joy of it I guess, we never will.

>>thumbu+642
Information and knowledge are emergent, meaning they have to be repeated over and over again before spreading to a majority of the populace. Most of which are not particularly interested.