this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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The first part is true. Why would you want corporations knowing about you. But the government part doesn't make sense. Why should your data be kept from the government? The government is the one organization I trust with my data because they hold records on every single citizen and have no monetary incentive to sell or misuse it.
My data in this case being stuff like Name, Address, workplace, family, medical history, employment history, friends.
Stuff I wouldn't want the government knowing would be my hobbies, my chatlogs, my search history. If they want that they should get a warrant.
I'm OK with the government buying/collecting and using stuff like location data if it's anonymized. I understand this stuff is needed to see general trends in the population and plan accordingly.
What she is talking about is the data the Chinese government collects about its people like where you go when, who you meet, what you buy, what you talk about, who you're friends with, if you are pregnant or not, etc.
Or what the NSA collects about Americans... like where you go when, who you meet, what you buy, what you talk about, who you're friends with, if you are pregnant or not, etc.
It's what decisions are made with that data that's the concern. A lot of "privacy advocates" believe that society can exist with the government not knowing anything about their population. I can't think how:
You're right, all this data can be used against someone for malicious reasons and like in the China example it's easier to locate dissonance by listening. But evil can be done without data collection, it's impossible to do good without it.
You don't need personalized data to do those things. You can just count how many people use the bus instead of checking for every person where they are going when and why.
I agree that aggregate data is the best way to improve things for the most number of people, you can't help every single person, but also knowing the edge cases helps you find out things you don't know.
My government buys my raw fucking web traffic from my service provider.
What about when a government decides that you must wear a special armband for being Jewish or Roma or gay?