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Comment by chaxor | Hacker News Reader

This is what is extremely strange to me (by principle). When the government does it, it seems to make many more headlines and people are outraged, but when a company does it, there is far more acceptance.

In principle, it should be far more concerning to see private entities getting access to personal data - because they operate without any opportunity for the public to be involved (their pure tyrannies in a sense) and are completely opaque, but the government is far more transparent and the one institution which you can change by democratic involvement.

Of course, this type of data gathering is concerning in any case, but the government is the last on the list of entities we should be worried about having it.

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Government surveillance is supposed to require a warrant. Efforts to bypass that requirement are scandalous because the warrant requirement is there to protect against tyranny of the majority. It's a known failure mode of democratic governments and the check on government power is important.

Corporate surveillance is a different beast because people can choose which corporations they do business with, absent market consolidation. We are not absent market consolidation, but it's that which is the scandal, not what would otherwise be voluntary associations between private parties.

"supposed" to. That's how the "democratic" governments market themselves to be

> We are not absent market consolidation, but it's that which is the scandal, not what would otherwise be voluntary associations between private parties.

This is the crux of it, it's not voluntary association to be a participant in the surveillance economy. If I didn't live in the EU this would be my train of thought: I didn't choose it, I just accessed a website that had trackers and eventually that data is sold, I wasn't willing to do it and the contract for it is buried somewhere and simply by accessing it I've implicitly given the system tacit agreement to get my data scooped up.

That's why I believe GDPR was a major advancement for data privacy, I can actually choose to block trackers or to not access a website if they make it hard to not be tracked.

You realize that EU is also trying to weaken encryption and give governments more power right?

As an EU citizen, yes, I'm very aware.

In here though I talked explicitly about GDPR and data privacy in the surveillance economy sense.

I'm not discussing encryption or government overreach on privacy matters in the EU in general, unsure why it is brought up in this thread, care to expand?

So worrying about corporations and privacy from them when the government who literally has a “monopoly on violence” is taking away your privacy is like worrying about a mosquito bite when you have been shot.

I can worry about both, no? Because it's like... I do. And I can praise that the EU found a solution for one case while it's trying to overreach on another, it's not 1 or 0 here.

I still don't get why you brought this up when I'm specifically talking about one case of data privacy where I believe the EU has done right, I believe it's doing wrong with encryption and I'm actively contacting MEPs to share my view.

Again, what's your point? They're different issues, why are you conflating them and creating a strawman?

> This is the crux of it, it's not voluntary association to be a participant in the surveillance economy

The EU doesn’t care about protecting you from “surveillance”.

I've explicitly said "surveillance economy". Don't misrepresent what I've said again for your own soapboxing, please.

> Government surveillance is supposed to require a warrant.

No, invasive government surveillance is supposed to require a warrant. Invasive is defined as a search of your 'person, house, papers, or effects'.

A third party's records on you aren't your person, house, papers, or effects. They are records concerning you, but they are not your records.

The government (just like every other government in the world) doesn't need a warrant to receive a tip, to ask your neighbour if they want to volunteer/sell any information about you, or to surveil you when you go about your public activities.

I'm sure you didn't consent to be the subject of that tip, or to your neighbour snitching on you. That still doesn't mean that it's not a legitimate form of surveillance.

“ Corporate surveillance is a different beast because people can choose which corporations they do business with”

Being surveilled by private entities is non-consensual and hardly ‘choosing to do business with them’.

Did you consent to the long list of trackers and brokers? Charles Schwab communicates your web activities to Facebook and many others, even before you log in or have even signed up. Did you consent to that?

Corporate surveillance is different because corporations can't throw you in jail, can't send police and such at you. That's all.

Corporations can and 100% do send police at people or throw them in jail.

A high profile example, though there are many others: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/business/energy-environme...

The fact that government involvement is needed is really semantics. No one affected by this decision could hold the officials responsible for this decision accountable, so the government is really an arm of the corporation at this point. This is inevitable when consolidation of wealth/power isn’t limited.

"Send police" was wrong, certainly.

There are other examples too, like when Hertz gets you arrested for GTA because someone else was late returning the rental car you're driving.

Historically, there are several instances of governments accumulating more and more power until they turn into a totalitarian state and remove freedoms from their citizens. I don't know of any companies who have abused their power to that extent.

Historically (and currently) there are many companies that directly or indirectly working to limit freedoms, either alone or complicit with governments. Corporations are powerful and in many places have as much power over people as governments. It can be as varied as surveillance (Cisco in China) to murdering opponents (Shell in Nigeria), to industry lobbying. Look around and you'll find many more.

The solution to the problem is to go down the EU route of reducing the rights of anyone to collect all this information and make it harder to access that which is collected. It's by no means perfect but it is the right direction.

Ever heard of East India company ?

Does the Ludlow Massacre count?

> taking testimony from all the principals, including Rockefeller Sr., who testified that, even after knowing that guards in his pay had committed atrocities against the strikers, he "would have taken no action" to prevent his hirelings from attacking them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

Well, private industries don’t have a “monopoly on violence”. The number of things that a private company can do to me pale in comparison to what the government can do

On the other hand, the US is essentially an oligarchy masquerading as a democratic republic, and the relationship between Big Tech (particularly the big social media silos) and three-letter agencies/the military industrial complex is disturbingly incestuous. Government having the monopoly on violence doesn't imply corporate power is benign when people are killed over their metadata.

Private industries routinely buy government officials with a monopoly on violence, and regular citizens have no recourse to remove those officials so the distinction is meaningless.

Go through history and tally up the human rights violations done by companies and govts and see who the leader is.

The govt has an army, police, and jails. The govt has legal means to use violence against people and deny them their freedoms. Any company that could do that would be doing it with the blessing of the govt first, which kinda just makes them a govt contractor.

Govt having information is not the same as a company who just wants to pre-approve you for a loan or show you a YouTube ad.

> This is what is extremely strange to me (by principle). When the government does it, it seems to make many more headlines and people are outraged, but when a company does it, there is far more acceptance.

Exactly, and all it needs to keep people calm is to create a puppet advertising company that does its job and covertly pass the data to govt organizations, or infiltrate an established one. Problem is that personal data mining has become vital for our modern toxic economy, so I don't see how the practice could go away anytime soon, especially when those making the laws and those taking advantage from it are essentially the same entities.

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