Long thread/46
The last time an American president signed a consumer privacy law was 1988, when Reagan signed the Video Privacy Protection Act and ensured that Americans would never have to worry that video-store clerks where telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes they took home.
In the years since, Congress has enacted exactly *zero* consumer privacy laws. None. This has allowed the out-of-control, unregulated data broker sector to metastasize into a cancer on the American people.
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Cory Doctorow
In response to this postLong thread/47
This is an industry that fuels stalkers, discriminatory financial and hiring algorithms, and an ad-tech sector that lets advertisers target categories like "teenagers with depression," "seniors with dementia" and "armed service personnel with gambling addictions."
When the people cry out for privacy protections, Congress - and the surveillance industry shills that fund them - say we don't need a privacy law. The market will solve this problem.
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Long thread/48
People sell their privacy willingly, and it would be "undue interference in the market" if we took away your "freedom to contract" by barring companies from spying on you after you clicked the "I agree" button.
These people have been repeatedly warned about the severe dangers to the American public - as workers, as citizens, as community members, and as consumers - from the national privacy free-for-all, and have done nothing. Fuck them, every one:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy
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by Cory Doctorow ;
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