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Comment by alksjdalkj | Hacker News Reader

If a private company can buy the data why shouldn't the government be able to?

The real solution is to not allow the data to be sold to anyone.

Private companies (theoretically/ideally) don't have the power of life and death over you

But they do. Private companies have killed people with ill-made products [1], pollute our air and water [2], have purposely targeted people for harassment [3], and created drugs solely for addiction [4]. These examples only took 30 seconds of thought.

The idea that businesses (whether public or private) can't hurt me or my family is absurd.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher-Price#Rock_'n_Play_reca...

[2] https://www.consumerreports.org/water-contamination/how-frac...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackler_family#Opioid_lawsuits

Like literally, the amount of instances where the government is weighing life/death is very small, even smaller at the federal level (most death penalty cases are against state laws). If you're meaning in the 'government programs can greatly affect my quality of life', then private companies can totally do that too - through targeted advertising.

I'm not sure if this is satire/sarcasm. Are you comparing the power to imprison people with targeted advertising?

That the government has power over you at all is what matters, not how often it exercises that power against you. Already parallel case construction is a troubling problem (given the warrantless domestic surveillance). Grant the government access to surveillance capitalism / ad tech, and now you've got another vector to launder evidence.

Like literally, that is the basis for state power - several iterations of "...or else" finally end with "we kill you". Private companies don't enjoy that privilege - because they don't have the power to distinguish murder from justifiable homicide.

More broadly, a monopoly on violence.

Slightly less broadly, a monopoly on "legitimate" violence not limited to self-defense or a proportional, reciprocal response to prior violence.

If the state actually managed to monopolize all violence that would be much better than what we have in practice, with plenty of non-state violence in addition to that instigated by the state, though calling any aggressive use of violence "legitimate" would remain a travesty.

not to mention the power to imprison you.

>don't have the power of life and death over you

Actually they do. See this for just one of the many ways they have that power:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2007/12/21/teen-dies-hours-after...

I'd go farther than that and say that such data shouldn't be collected in the first place.

There is a solution - individually act in a way to limit what is collected. Take charge of the tracking devices you own, and of your spend. For extra credit, seed with bad data or misdirection.

Statistically zero people make any effort, other than maybe saying the government should limit government data mining. Here is an idea, turn off mobile phone location tracking this weekend.

>Statistically zero people make any effort, other than maybe saying the government should limit government data mining. Here is an idea, turn off mobile phone location tracking this weekend.

What, exactly, do you mean by "mobile phone location tracking"?

Your phone provider needs to be able to locate your device to provide voice and data services. You'd need to remove your battery to disable that "phone location tracking." In which case, it's just a lump of glass and plastic. Which might make a good paperweight.

As for "location services" and GPS, I never turn those on.

As I said, the data shouldn't be collected -- at all. That's a regulatory issue, not a technical one.

Because the Government has a strictly limited power: it is subsidiary.

There are plenty of things government can do that private industry does not have the ability to do.

Making transactions (and even paying informants for information) are and should be within the power of the government.

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