zlacker

I remember at like the third HOPE conference hearing a PI talk about all the data he can get about anyone from all kinds of sources, for pennies. That was 23 years ago. There's never been (to my knowledge) any law preventing the USG from using the same services.

And why should they be prevented? If a random stalker can pay for info about you, shouldn't your government be able to? Why cripple the state and enable the creeps?

Profiling has always been interesting to me from a commercial perspective, too. I used to have access to a database that would tell me if a certain sports fan was a gay republican, because the cookie-based mass-site-collection profile-generator needed to be able to tell advertisers what kinds of users they were selling ads to. I thought it was wild that you never needed to create an account for us to mostly-uniquely identify you. And that was 15 years ago.

Don't like it? A small handful of states have data privacy laws now. Tell your reps your state needs one too, and a federal one for good measure.