Feb. 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
In 2019, a source came to us with a digital file containing the precise locations of more than 12 million individual smartphones for several months in 2016 and 2017. The data is supposed to be anonymous, but it isn’t. We found celebrities, Pentagon officials and average Americans.
It became clear that this data — collected by smartphone apps and then fed into a dizzyingly complex digital advertising ecosystem — was a liability to national security, to free assembly and to citizens living mundane lives. It provided an intimate record of people whether they were visiting drug treatment centers, strip clubs, casinos, abortion clinics or places of worship.
Surrendering our privacy to the government would be foolish enough. But what is more insidious is the Faustian bargain made with the marketing industry, which turns every location ping into currency as it is bought and sold in the marketplace of surveillance advertising.
Now, one year later, we’re in a very similar position. But it’s far worse.
A source has provided another data set, this time following the smartphones of thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump’s political rally turned into a violent insurrection. At least five people died because of the riot at the Capitol. Key to bringing the mob to justice has been the event’s digital detritus: location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing.
So social tracking is here, once born it cannot die, the question is when and how do we use it while protecting everyones rights and freedoms.
First things first, the entire technology should be taken from the advertising industry, or at least limited in scope. There's a big difference between easy and intuitive shopping that makes my life easier and Goggle only serving up political opinions that I'm likely to agree with.
The "opinion bubble" needs to be burst.
I'd propose an organization, like "Snopes" be regulated enough to be demonstrably unbiased, and financed in such a way that they can never be bribed and have that information readily available at all times.
Then for domains to keep their registration each would have to be evaluated and assigned values for being factual, biased, violent etc..
These numbers should be fed into the "opinion bubble" search engines so they can bias search results toward more factual information rather than fitting with their profile of what they think you want to hear.
This could be done, but there'll be screams of protest from people that don't realize the technology exist and can't ever go away now.
Make up your mind either:
Regulate business to keep the economy healthy, so you can have free people.
or
Regulate people to keep the economy healthy, so you can have jungle capitalism.
Conservatives keep opting for regulating people.
Conservatives are dicks.