The difference to me is that data in the hands of the government falls under- at least- some thin veil of democratic oversight and accountability in how it's handled; data in the hands of private entities goes for the most part unchecked.
The Taliban has reportedly seized US military biometrics equipment that could expose Afghans who helped coalition forces – since they contain identifying data like iris scans and fingerprints as well as biographical information. An unidentified Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) official told The Intercept that the Islamist group confiscated the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE) devices during its offensive push last week. The report was backed up by three former US military personnel.
They told the news outlet that the portable devices could be used to access sensitive information from large, centralized military databases, but noted that it was still unclear how much of the biometric database collected on the Afghan population has been compromised.
According to a US Army Corps of Engineers presentation, HIIDE devices use the data collected to create a “portfolio” that can then be imported into Biometrics Automated Toolset (BAT) identification-processing software as a “digital dossier.” This can be scanned against official watch lists for threats.
Besides tracking insurgents, the Pentagon was also reportedly keen to use the devices to gather unique data on 80% of the Afghan population to check for terrorist and criminal activity. Unnamed sources said biometric details of locals who helped the US were also collected and used in identification cards.
“We processed thousands of locals a day, had to ID, sweep for suicide vests, weapons, intel gathering, etc. ... [HIIDE] was used as a biometric ID tool to help ID locals working for the coalition,” an American military contractor told the outlet.
More info https://www.rt.com/usa/532419-taliban-biometric-data-afghan-...
It being unchecked is exactly the point of Google having an intelligence apparatus and governments being A-OK with that.
Government has a monopoly on the claim to legitimate use of force. All elements of this statement are crucial. The (usually Libertarian) objection neglects to consider "claim", "legitimate", and most aspects of "monopoly".
It seems like the problem becomes when one says something is a legitimate use of force, and another says it is an illegitimate use. I’d argue they already illegitimately use their force and we should be very careful to give them any more ability to do so.
More government surveillance could genuinely be good and we could catch more bank robbers and rapists with it maybe, but it could also be used to punish those who protest.
Imagine if we give the feds crazy surveillance powers, and nod in approval as they arrest those on the right not wearing masks while not vaccinated. We might save lives! Then Trump gets re-elected and decides to use that same surveillance to go and arrest those protesting the “legitimate” use of force against PoC.
Focusing on that for a moment:
There are companies which have visited violence on people. Often in a limited fashion, though not infrequently of an ulimited nature. Smith's Wealth of Nations discusses the companies of his times which operated their own private armies and navies. (He was Not A Fan.) There are today private armed forces, whether cast as private security, police, or mercenaries. Pretending that there's some inherent divide between governments which engage in deadly force and private industry which does not is simply false.
The worst abuses occur where governments and indsutries work hand-in-hand. That is part of the particular evil of ur-industrialism in its Fascist incarnation, where an elite industrial and financial class joins with a political group to wage genocide on its own people as well as the world. Note that Nazi Germany didn't operate without international support, and that companies including IBM provided direct, ongoing, contracted support for Nazi activities, including the Holocaust, throughout WWII. The tattoos you see on the arms of Holocaust survivors are in fact IBM-generated identification codes.
What I'm concerned about is unipolar power organised without restraint or separation of power, though constructing an effective-yet-functional separation also proves difficult. (The model inherent in the US constitution appears to function poorly in the face both of political parties and a division of the country in which no common agreement on basic facts seems possible.)
In the case of information and communications monopolies, which I've previously argued inherently give rise to censorship, propaganda, surveillance, and targeted manipulation, (See: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/7bfcf170eefc013863fa002590d8e... (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24771470)) there is a symbiosis between state and private / corporate activities and engagement. One part of the stimulus of the development of intrusive, ubiquitous, and privately-operated social networks was the NSTIC, National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, described by Alex Howard of O'Reilly Media as "[A Manhattan Project for Online Identity](http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/05/nstic-analysis-identity-pri...)".
One of the inherent problems in government is in designing tools and systems which can be effective, whilst being aware that as much as they'll help your own interests whilst you have some control over them, they'll serve the goals of your political opposition when _they_ gain power. (Note that thsi problem is not limited to government, and that there are numerous companies which have evolved far from the interests of their own founders over time. This seems to happen especially in the publishing and media space, see H.L. Mencken's American Mercury or The Learning Channel.) I'm not sure how that is ultimately to be dealt with, though I also believe that any tool which is useful is also of necessity potentially harmful.
But the notion that the solution to minority or tyrannical capture in government is to eliminate government's role in a domain and assign it instead to instituations based on minority and tyrannical control, that is, privately-owned businesses unanswerable to the general public and with an unlimited scope of monopoly control ... seems to have a few flaws.
Government and politics, for all their flaws, are literally the mechanism by which a public and polity comes to a mutual and shared agreement and actions.
And misquoting and misrepresenting Weber does that fact a tremendous disservice.
The only secure option for maintaining the privacy of data is not to collect it in the first place. Collecting it and then saying, "I'm going to hire better hackers to secure it than the guys attacking me will hire to gain access to it!" Is a bit naive. At scale, you're almost guaranteed to lose that bet.
This is the difference to me as well.
We are relying on governments to create those needed checks.