zlacker

I don’t fully disagree but there is still a big difference. People voluntarily give these companies their data. The companies aren’t skirting the law. We shouldn’t gatekeep disallowing government spying behind better consumer protections.

The kicker in all this is that the taxpayers are literally paying for this. We are paying to give the government our own data.

>>noneth+(OP)
My alarm bells for the Appeal to the Law fallacy went off. I see it quite often. When we’re discussing what the law should be, what the law currently is is irrelevant (unless your position is that laws should not change).

The fact that it is currently legal to harvest this data and the fact that it is currently legal for the government to purchase it should have no bearing on whether they should be able to in the future.

Further, there is a serious question with regards to the extent to which these businesses had the actual informed consent of their users. Do people fully understand that their information will be sold to data brokers? Do they understand that the government will be able to purchase said info with our money (and possibly use this information to incarcerate them)? The latter is almost certainly no, which is why the government fought so hard to keep it a secret.