Many private sector companies handle data that the general public probably shouldn’t. Extending special protections to the state that are not allowed to private employers is ridiculous and unsafe.
Companies like credit bureaus or banks or the telcos or airlines or hospitals are effectively arms of the state at this point. You don’t get to opt out of the oligarchy with consumer choice.
And let's face it, it's not like corporate America needs the government's help to abuse you based on your private information. Not in a day and age where you can be denied a job because of your credit history or kicked off your insurance because of your health records. People throw off tons of data, and companies have been working for decades to figure out how to use it to screw you.
Private companies can do whatever immoral garbage they want, and in exchange for access to the data or the product they developed in an unethical manner, the government slaps them on the wrist, or does nothing, allowing it to get worse and worse and allowing them to assert more control over us.
Imagine the story when people find out this or another company started skimming the porn sites with facial recognition, starts gaining access to surveillance footage from Nest or Ring, or maybe even gets access to state and federal DOT cameras and real time feeds from body cameras!
Facial recognition is going to need some regulation, ASAP.
incredible as it may seem to say, data security is a secondary concern vs the very concept of these businesses, which exercise enormous and often malign influence over the lives of citizens. Take together, the are in effect a privatised 'social credit' system which can stop you from getting a home, a car, a job, any kind of insurance, effectively cutting you off from healthcare and the rest. They are instruments of oppression, their private status providing US Gov moral cover and the permission to still claim 'land of the free'
Even without the privacy issues it is insane that you are forced to do business with certain corporations in order to fully participate in society. But most people don't care or open alternatives would be more popular.
I really wish this was better understood about consumer brand capitalism. These companies would have massive loss in value if they did not preserve privacy.
I am reminded of when an airline roughly pulled a doctor off a plane -- the company lost billions in market value. They won't make that mistake again. That's moral capitalism at it's best. If it had been a government owned service, I don't think there would be such a powerful feedback cycle.
Similarly, because Google would lose billions if they didn't care for my data, I trust them more than gov't.
Note that this only works for consumer brand capitalism -- it didn't work with Equifax.
It seems like consumers can't agree on why they are upset with these companies. I don't even think we can agree that a private company shouldn't be making decisions about what information should be allowed or removed.
Kind of sad when you need a private company to give your citizens the basic privacy they want (doubly so when you have to simply trust said company that the partners they are working with are honest). Maybe the US's privacy laws need a 21st Century make over?
It’s really impossible to allow surveillance capitalism for only some to knowingly opt in. The way Google, Facebook and others are built to vacuum up everything they can get puts those of us who care about our privacy in a losing situation.
For example when your therapist emails you from their Gmail account to set appointments, now Google knows you see a therapist. I never signed up to give that information to Google. Pay your bill your credit card, now Mastercard knows you see a therapist.
There needs to be some reasonable expectation of privacy written into law and a reasonable limit to how data can be captured and used.
That certainly is the devil’s side. Unfortunately too many firms have affixed phony halos and then exfiltrated the People‘a personal data. Opt-in is the only way the People will be able to choose whom they trust.
I actually feel much worse with the fact that large corporations with no oversight, who knows what kind of security, no counter-intelligence and little if any background checks on employees, have a front-door entrance to my data. Think about this: how hard would it be for a crime organization to put some Google employees on their payroll and use them to get personal information on just about anyone. How hard would it be for them to threaten a Google employee to provide them with information? So now the government wants in? Join the party.
I'd actually be happy, though, if the government put in place some/more regulation on companies that collect so much personal data.
Any payday loan company? The financial service companies that figured out how to obfuscate shitty assets and led to the 2008 recession? Companies that mine your data and sell it to the highest bidder and rely on hiding privacy settings or making it too complicated for most people to prevent? Companies like Equifax that hold on to important personal data and don't even do the bare minimum to protect it?
To be honest I'm not sure how to even respond to the statement that the law aligns with pretty well with ethics. The law aligns pretty well with what the people with power want and in any study of ethics you quickly learn that legal != ethical
This is not those companies fault that politics instead of protecting users privacy and freedom of decisions are protecting their own access to user data.
People managed to survive for generations living in a tribe, city whatever you call one place yet now politics want to know everything about them to sustain power they gained using technology they know nothing about.
Companies like credit bureaus or banks or the telcos or airlines or hospitals are effectively arms of the state at this point. You don’t get to opt out of the oligarchy with consumer choice.
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