#public partnerships

[mostlysignssomeportents]

At long last, a meaningful step to protect Americans' privacy

This Saturday (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

Privacy raises some thorny, subtle and complex issues. It also raises some stupid-simple ones. The American surveillance industry's shell-game is founded on the deliberate confusion of the two, so that the most modest and sensible actions are posed as reductive, simplistic and unworkable.

Two pillars of the American surveillance industry are credit reporting bureaux and data brokers. Both are unbelievably sleazy, reckless and dangerous, and neither faces any real accountability, let alone regulation.

Remember Equifax, the company that doxed every adult in America and was given a mere wrist-slap, and now continues to assemble nonconsensual dossiers on every one of us, without any material oversight improvements?

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/20/equifax-settles-with-ftc-cfpb-states-and-consumer-class-actions-for-700m/

Equifax's competitors are no better. Experian doxed the nation again, in 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/30/dox-the-world/#experian

It's hard to overstate how fucking scummy the credit reporting world is. Equifax invented the business in 1899, when, as the Retail Credit Company, it used private spies to track queers, political dissidents and "race mixers" so that banks and merchants could discriminate against them:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

As awful as credit reporting is, the data broker industry makes it look like a paragon of virtue. If you want to target an ad to "Rural and Barely Making It" consumers, the brokers have you covered:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#axciom

More than 650,000 of these categories exist, allowing advertisers to target substance abusers, depressed teens, and people on the brink of bankruptcy:

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/06/08/from-heavy-purchasers-of-pregnancy-tests-to-the-depression-prone-we-found-650000-ways-advertisers-label-you

These companies follow you everywhere, including to abortion clinics, and sell the data to just about anyone:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

There are zillions of these data brokers, operating in an unregulated wild west industry. Many of them have been rolled up into tech giants (Oracle owns more than 80 brokers), while others merely do business with ad-tech giants like Google and Meta, who are some of their best customers.

As bad as these two sectors are, they're even worse in combination – the harms data brokers (sloppy, invasive) inflict on us when they supply credit bureaux (consequential, secretive, intransigent) are far worse than the sum of the harms of each.

And now for some good news. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, under the leadership of Rohit Chopra, has declared war on this alliance:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/16/cfpb-looks-to-restrict-the-sleazy-link-between-credit-reporting-agencies-and-data-brokers/

They've proposed new rules limiting the trade between brokers and bureaux, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, putting strict restrictions on the transfer of information between the two:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/15/tech/privacy-rules-data-brokers/index.html

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, this is long overdue and meaningful. Remember all the handwringing and chest-thumping about Tiktok stealing Americans' data to the Chinese military? China doesn't need Tiktok to get that data – it can buy it from data-brokers. For peanuts.

The CFPB action is part of a muscular style of governance that is characteristic of the best Biden appointees, who are some of the most principled and competent in living memory. These regulators have scoured the legislation that gives them the power to act on behalf of the American people and discovered an arsenal of action they can take:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Alas, not all the Biden appointees have the will or the skill to pull this trick off. The corporate Dems' darlings are mired in #LearnedHelplessness, convinced that they can't – or shouldn't – use their prodigious powers to step in to curb corporate power:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

And it's true that privacy regulation faces stiff headwinds. Surveillance is a public-private partnership from hell. Cops and spies love to raid the surveillance industries' dossiers, treating them as an off-the-books, warrantless source of unconstitutional personal data on their targets:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/16/ring-ring-lapd-calling/#ring

These powerful state actors reliably intervene to hamstring attempts at privacy law, defending the massive profits raked in by data brokers and credit bureaux. These profits, meanwhile, can be mobilized as lobbying dollars that work lawmakers and regulators from the private sector side. Caught in the squeeze between powerful government actors (the true "Deep State") and a cartel of filthy rich private spies, lawmakers and regulators are frozen in place.

Or, at least, they were. The CFPB's discovery that it had the power all along to curb commercial surveillance follows on from the FTC's similar realization last summer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

I don't want to pretend that all privacy questions can be resolved with simple, bright-line rules. It's not clear who "owns" many classes of private data – does your mother own the fact that she gave birth to you, or do you? What if you disagree about such a disclosure – say, if you want to identify your mother as an abusive parent and she objects?

But there are so many stupid-simple privacy questions. Credit bureaux and data-brokers don't inhabit any kind of grey area. They simply should not exist. Getting rid of them is a project of years, but it starts with hacking away at their sources of profits, stripping them of defenses so we can finally annihilate them.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[gay-impressionist]

France's ministry of foreign affairs just added to its HR procedures that it will pay plane tickets for its civil servants living in countries where abortion is banned, so they can get one in France if they need it.

It's great that they thought of that... And so fucked up that it has to get to this.

[beechicory]

Matt, you can't do this to us, we're fragile 😭

[vaxxildamn]

very happy Matt decided to clarify his stance on the genocide of the Palestinian people rn. Pretty unhappy with the way he worded it, who he centered in his video, and disappointed to see the responses to it on Twitter.

kinda scared to even post about it bc CR fans can get so defensive about their favorite white people that they can often leave little room for criticism or nuance. but man I have thoughts.

[eleplay]

it is funnie that this* is the first year where my mom didn't request extra lny cards to be sent to her for her to send to some of her church friends. coincidence perhaps but. lol. you know

[rabbitcruiser]

Woven

What do you think about my pic?

[turn3tifosi]

thank u for doing the req!! i enjoyed it smmmm

pepe def looks like he takes lit for his electives!! i feel like he'd study also music for his electives (he seems into classical music and her family is art inclined). for his major i feel like he'd be leaning into business???? -🍯

i'm glad you liked it!!

i think classical music, art and literature are so connected, he started with one of them and fell in love with the others as he got deeper in to the subject.

i think his major could be something like physics or math that everyone generally finds difficult and avoids. pepe genuinely loves physics because he always found stuff fascinating and then he found out there was an explanation for it all!!

pepe definitely wrote how physics & literature are really similar, with valid examples for an essay his first year, that endeared both his physics professor and his literature professor (which might be why she wanted pepe to be partners with you (who is one of her star students) she couldn't for the work you two would do together!!)

OR

maybe he has a dual major with business and physics because he was indecisive and loved them both, but couldn't choose to keep one as a major.

he's a popular figure in the college because literally all his professors sing his praises and the girls all find his extensive knowledge in so many different fields so charming

[coachbeards]

singer ted, songwriter beard…trust real and true

[cliveguy]

Not to keep on about this year's brands vs pride showcase but it really is insane to see social media teams nuking entire ad campaigns over anti-trans twitter harassment

[mostlysignssomeportents]

From experience, I can tell you that Silicon Valley techies are pretty sanguine about commercial surveillance: “Why should I care if Google wants to show me better ads?” But they are much less cool about government spying: “The NSA? Those are the losers who weren’t smart enough to get an interview at Google.” And likewise from experience, I can tell you that government employees and contractors are pretty cool with state surveillance: “Why would I worry about the NSA spying on me? I already gave the Office of Personnel Management a comprehensive dossier of all possible kompromat in my past when I got my security clearance.” But they are far less cool with commercial surveillance: “Google? Those creeps would sell their mothers for a nickel. To the Chinese.” What are they both missing? That American surveillance is a public-private partnership: a symbiosis between a concentrated tech sector that has the means, motive, and opportunity to spy on every person in the world and a state that loves surveillance as much as it hates checks and balances. Big Tech, cops, and surveillance agencies were made for one another.

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

[llycaons]

I can and have xed out of fics that make lwj speak too much. in fact I just did. stop giving that man paragraphs!!

[tutuandscoot]

Reading your tags, and the relationship I’m desperate to have is not VM’s, but the relationship V and M have with their spouses. After all, if this is what platonic love looks like for them, romantic love must be mind blowing? I remember Alma once saying that VM would be ideal spouses for other people because they learned how to deal with the opposite sex in their own relationship. Their spouses must be the luckiest people in the world!

This is the kind of appreciation and understanding of their beautiful and unique situations we should all have more of !!

[mafaldaknows]

What I was trying to say is that Deux Moi has paid information to disperse because selling sweatshirts isn’t their primary business, it’s a bonus. They’ve positioned themselves as a media entertainment/information source who also received a notable credit mention in Vanity Fair. Whether to promote, inform, distract, deflect or entertain, people’s minds are open grounds to build realestate and the industry knows this. It’s a cruel world, people making money creating the imaginary, fulfilling people’s fantasies only to blame and shame the viewer when they get it wrong because they’re so innocent/gullible to believe it. Ultimately what I am trying to say is DM is also getting paid from industry, because if they ever get it seriously wrong, someone is coming for reparations no matter the disclaimer.

Hello, Anon:

My point about the sweatshirts was that DeuxMoi is in the business of making money by exploiting the weaknesses of celebrities and the gullible public. They have no interest whatsoever in publishing the truth, yet people rely on their rumors and allegations like it’s the truth, and many willingly wear that fact in public proudly.

Indubitably, there are those in the entertainment industry who use whatever resources they can find to work in their clients’ best interests in the most expedient, efficient, cost-effective way possible, and what could be more expedient, efficient, and cost-effective than dropping one rumor into DeuxMoi’s inbox for free and letting the gullible public on social media take it from there? And what publicist would want to lose that valuable resource?

Whatever their arrangement might be, it seems that DeuxMoi is supported by the Hollywood PR industry, or they wouldn’t have been allowed to thrive and flourish as they have, as both parties have a vested interest in manipulating and monetizing our attention, using celebrities as bait.

They’re perfect partners.

X

Thanks for the clarification. ☺️💗

[frankbelloriley]

[curiouschild]

Sometimes it just astounds me how these incredible women I know are all single