In your face, US citizens! Govt can’t save you from corporate eyes

Alvaro Bedoya, the founding executive director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law, has claimed that industry lobbying is shutting down Washington’s ability to protect privacy in the face of the commercial exploitation of consumers' data. In an article in Slate, Bedoya, a former chief counsel to the …

[Camilla Smythe]

Via Aral Balkan...

https://twitter.com/aral/status/616144877789806592

With reference to,

https://twitter.com/PandoDaily/status/615919679802970113

You might wish to compare and contrast The Advertising Industry, and their supporters, to The Tobacco Industry... and their supporters.... Or indeed Telecoms, net neutrality, or any other Industry---

There's big fuck off bucks to be made from screwing over the majority of the 'dumb fuck' population by targeting their ignorance.

HTH

[elDog]

Re: Via Aral Balkan...

Thanks for those links. Same old, but different ways of subverting the common good.

[elDog]

The Corporation IS the government (as well as being a person)

For all the trappings of "democracy" and "freedom" that come out of our PR machines, the US is a perfect example of money run rampant. The current batch of politicians ru(i)nning this country are being well paid.

[Graham Marsden]

Re: The Corporation IS the government (as well as being a person)

As the saying has it: An honest politician is one who stays bought...

[Vector]

USA!

Championing Democracy (as run by economists)

[chris swain]

At the risk of coming across as a tinfoil hatter...

One might suggest that allowing big tech companies free rein with Joe Schmoe's data will also give the spooks more sources for covert or overt surveillance. Probably only overt via a subpoena if they need to present it in court. Why would any self-respecting surveillance state want to prevent such a wealth of data from being available to it's minions?

[Anonymous Coward]

"any self-respecting surveillance state"

...And if that doesn't work out. Come to Ireland, we'll give you a tax break while you trample our data rights into the ground....

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0313/686753-data-protection/

[Wolfclaw]

LOL

Can just see the advertising slogan ....... DP'ing users with US Gov since 1989.

[Pascal Monett]

So Congress shows what stuff it is really made of - cotton fluff

But hey, as they say : the market is self-regulating, right ?

Right.

So that means that, if the industry is not willing to be regulated, the onus is on us to regulate it : by not buying their products.

I'm sure that, when (if?) a company brings out a product that is guaranteed to respect our security and privacy and the other companies see their market share melt like an ice cream cone on a New York sidewalk in July, then there will be changes.

The bottom line, people. Never forget the bottom line. It's up to us to bottom theirs.

In other words, a lost cause.

[Tree]

Hillary Clinton kept FBI files

Be more wary of what private things the government knows about you. Some in government use information about others to gain power, whether through blackmail or selective leaking of derogatory information. The government knowing about me is of more concern than a private company. A private company cannot jail me. Neither can it seize my assets like the IRS.

But the government is spying on Google, etc. Therefore, I will block Google from learning about me.