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Comment by TWAndrews | Hacker News Reader

It's also the stark differences in the consequences of misuse. Google can use my information to serve me diabolically targeted ads. The government can put me in jail. It's not that I trust Google more, it's that they have vastly less power to harm me even if their intentions are bad.

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The difference is quite subtle, if any. I'm not even sure why you are afraid of government stalking. After all, government is prevented by the rule of law from arbitrarily throw you in jail. For every reason you are afraid of government, you should be afraid of corporation X. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that corporation X will not collude with the government to do you harm 10 years from now. These corporations are building your dossier with a detail that would make Stasi blush. If there are teeth to such dossiers, they'll make use of it in good time, perhaps hand in hand with the government.

> After all, government is prevented by the rule of law from arbitrarily throw you in jail

That hasn't exactly stopped them from holding detainees in Guantanamo with no charges for years, and no hope of release.

If the government gets the wrong idea about you, they may bust your door down and run in with guns drawn, then shoot you because they think you're reaching for a gun.

While I'm concerned about what Google or Facebook will do with my information, the biggest concern (and the one expressed here) is that the government will demand or snoop it from them, and act on it in one of the ways described above.

> After all, government is prevented by the rule of law from arbitrarily throw you in jail.

This statement is factually incorrect. The government is allowed to hold you for however long they want, without trial, as long as they call you "terrorist". www.ndaa2012.us

After all, government is prevented by the rule of law from arbitrarily throw you in jail

In the uk and the us at least this is no longer true. I they call you a terrorist (with or without proof) the normal laws don't apply. They are also collecting everything we do and storing it for as long as technically possible, quite soon that will be forever.

Government agencies are the bigger problem at the present moment in time, not corporations.

Actually much of the US law only applies to people in the USA. The US 'rule of law' doesn't stop the US government from spying on non-US-citizens like me. I have no "fourth amendment rights"

The US government can send a drone to kill you.

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