Why Big Tech, Cops, and Spies Were Made for One Another

by Cory Doctorow

The American surveillance state is a public-private partnership.

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/16/surveillance-state-big-tech/

The techlash has finally reached the courts. Amazon’s in court. Google’s in court. Apple’s under EU investigation. The French authorities just kicked down Nvidia’s doors and went through their files looking for evidence of crimes against competition. People are pissed at tech: about moderation, about monopolization, about price gouging, about labor abuses, and — everywhere and always — about privacy.

#privacy #surveillance #security #doctorow #cory-doctorow #monopoly #spying #surveillance-capitalism #surveillance-economy #nsa #snowden #prism #amazon #google #facebook #nvidia #apple #spies#big-tech #cops

Google Allowed a Sanctioned Russian Ad Company to Harvest User Data for Months

https://www.propublica.org/article/google-russia-rutarget-sberbank-sanctions-ukraine

Of particular concern, the analysis showed that Google shared data with RuTarget about users browsing websites based in Ukraine. This means Google may have turned over such critical information as unique mobile phone IDs, IP addresses, location information and details about users’ interests and online activity, data that U.S. senators and experts say could be used by Russian military and intelligence services to track people or zero in on locations of interest.

Google doesn't care. They just want more money.

The root problem is that the hardware, software, and protocols people use don't minimize the amount of information they exfiltrate. There is no excuse for allowing hardware devices to uniquely identify themselves with mobile advertising IDs. There is no excuse for including useragent and referer headers in the HTTP protocol. These are self-evidently terrible ideas. If we want any privacy at all in 2022 we must never access any network with a phone. As for HTTPS, I think we need to move to simpler, more privacy-friendly protocols like Gopher and Gemini.

Someone comes up with a good idea, and the billionaires "monetize" it into another Orwellian nightmare.

I want to use and control my computers, but I don't want to be used and controlled by them.

#privacy #security #surveillance #google #russia #ukraine #war #surveillance-economy #ads #advertising #smart-phones #trackers #tracking

I Want You Back: Getting My Personal Data From Amazon Was Weeks of Confusion and Tedium

I asked Amazon to provide the data it had collected on me. The process was a labyrinthine endurance test.

https://theintercept.com/2022/03/27/amazon-personal-data-request-dark-pattern/

Notice that much of the information he got was wrong. I've seen this myself. Spokeo and others store "information" that is mostly wrong, and people pay them for it, and no one charges them with fraud.

#privacy #security #surveillance #perversion-economy #surveillance-economy #surveillance-capitalism #safety #stalking #perversion #stalking-economy #amazon #oligarch #oligarchs #plutocrat #plutocrats #kleptocrats