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A government agency, which might even have good use for the data, isn't the problem. The problem is sending your precise location to Facebook and a two dozen silly little games and a note app, which all sell this data to anyone and their brother.

By framing the problem as being with untrustworthy government agencies rather than with greedy data brokers selling data everywhere, you are part of the problem. You may distrust your government as much as you'd like, but before we solve the problems with private data brokers, we can never improve the situation.

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If I were to visit or migrate to the US, I'd have to take every precaution to avoid ICE mistaking me for an illegal immigrant.

The difference is that private brokers don’t have “a monopoly on [legslized] violence”. Facebook doesn’t have an army of masked jack booted thugs with military gear.

Sure, but those masked thugs of yours can simply buy what they need from Facebook. They have deep pockets and it would not even be an inconvenience for them. In fact, for at least for political systems with checks and balances, subcontracting to data brokers carry huge upsides of minimizing responsibilities.



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