SCOTUS ruled explicitly on this question in Katz vs. US -- wiretapping is unconstitutional, regardless of physical intrusion. Just because you route your voice through a switch owned and controlled by a third part does not mean you give up your expectation of privacy.
That's not what is happening here. The police are not purchasing access like an advertiser would; they are receiving special access for the purpose of tracking suspects.
> If you had, I imagine SCOTUS would rule differently.
The SCOTUS of the 1960s was very clear -- routing your communication through a corporate party does not, in any way, negate your expectation of privacy from your own government!
SCOTUS has changed drastically since the 1960s, and I will be unsurprised if SCOTUS rolls back every single 'privacy' case that it encounters. But that has nothing to do with the merits of these cases; it's a way of salting the earth so that Roe v. Wade can be overturned while appearing less overtly political.
Yes, but my point was that we're only arguing about how much someone should have to spend to gain access.
> The SCOTUS of the 1960s was very clear -- routing your communication through a corporate party does not,
But my point, _again_, is that they were _not_ clear that you have some expectation of privacy after _selling your personal data on an exchange_.
Given the current state of affairs, doesn't that effectively amount to not carrying a cell phone if you don't want to be tracked? It's not reasonable to assume that I opted in to sharing my data given that no realistic alternative is available to me.
I do see your point though - if third party exchanges dealing in such data are legal, then why can't the government use it? It does seem inconsistent.
Personally, I think GDPR was a reasonable first step down the path of regulation. I would personally like to see a regulation in the US that forced companies to offer data reselling as an add-on to a base package. As a programmer in 2019, I think it's a bit hypocritical of me to opt-in to the industry that is responsible for the situation we are in while saying 'regulation is the solution here'.
But it's important to note that we've moved from a legal to a moral question. Legally, I believe the government is currently in the right. Morally, the situation sucks and we should change it.
Ehh, it's not as though changing your profession would have any sort of meaningful influence on something as large and nebulous as data harvesting, aggregation, sale, and similar. Where would you even draw the line? I suspect you would have trouble finding a reasonably sized company to work for that doesn't engage with adtech or use some form of analytics in some way. Regulation is the only solution I can see here.
Unless you are responsible for the current situation then you aren't being hypocritical. I'm a programmer and only develop free software. I don't at all feel hypocritical to day that tech companies should be far more strictly regulated when it comes to user privacy and (god forbid!) ethics.