The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.wired.com/story/odni-commercially-available-information-report/

free link: https://archive.is/SzVdL

The United States government has been secretly amassing a “large amount” of “sensitive and intimate information” on its own citizens, a group of senior advisers informed Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, more than a year ago.

The size and scope of the government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans' lives are described soberly and at length by the director's own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. Haines had first tasked her advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and US intelligence community members.

What that report ended up saying constitutes a nightmare scenario for privacy defenders.

“This report reveals what we feared most,” says Sean Vitka, a policy attorney at the nonprofit Demand Progress. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.”

[RKP5637]

1. Really not surprised ... n/t

[PSPS]

2. Not really new. The NSA turned Utah into one giant hard drive ten years ago.

[CrispyQ]

3. Privacy is dead. We traded it for convenience.

We did this to ourselves. "Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to do X anymore?" "It would be so cool if technology could do Y for us." We wanted easier lives & they gave it to us.

Also, most legislative bodies can't keep up with technology & when they're as dysfunctional as ours, well good luck.

[Kid Berwyn]

4. Hannah Arendt on "Why they would do that."

The Goal of Wholesale Surveillance

The goal of wholesale surveillance, as (Hannah) Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.

Chris Hedges, The Last Gasp of American Democracy

[ProfessorPlum]

6. It's the same reason they make common things that people do illegal

so there is always an excuse on hand to arrest anyone at will. The drug war, the war on pot, etc. are great examples of this.

[Farmer-Rick]

10. Exactly this

Nuisance laws are most common in red states. I think forced birth laws fall into that category since an abortion is just a drive across a state line or a plane ticket away.

Since half the states in the US allow abortions up to viability, the red states are not stopping anyone from getting an abortion. They are just punishing the poor and vulnerable with forced birth so they can keep them poor and vulnerable and later easily rounded up.

[Bonx]

5. "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime"

[Chainfire]

7. Steppenwolf warned us:

"The police force is watching the people, and the people just can't understand."

[hunter]

8. I strive to keep my dirt amusing.

As evidenced by my DU posting history.

[Kaleva]

15. I need to post more in Weird News

[Ferrets are Cool]

9. In most part, you can thank Cheney for this shit.

[keep_left]

11. Yep, and many other neocon miscreants from the Bush eras (GHWB and GWB).

Adm John Poindexter, of Iran-Contra fame, was one of the key players in the Orwellian "Total Information Awareness" program.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office

[Ferrets are Cool]

16. In my mind, IF those actors had been Democrats, they would be rotting in jail, but

repugs rarely get what they deserve.

[Beartracks]

12. Puts the lie to "Well, if you haven't done anything wrong..."

... because what if they decide to re-define what is considered "wrong"??

==========

[alwaysinasnit]

13. k&r for visibility

[Hekate]

14. We give it all away for free every time we are given a shiny new toy. Then it gets monetized.

Am I surprised? Not a whole helluva lot.

[Solly Mack]

17. K&R