How are government agencies buying your data to bypass the Fourth Amendment?

Is your smart phone secretly sending your private health data to insurance companies?

Discover how surveillance capitalism threatens American democracy in Thom Hartmann’s deep dive into Big Tech. Learn how data brokers, smart devices, and facial recognition tools are dismantling privacy rights. Protect your digital freedom today—read the full summary to understand the legislative steps needed to reclaim your privacy from the surveillance state.

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Technology companies enable a new kind of surveillance state, argues progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann in this brief, disturbing book. Hartmann shows how today’s web giants evoke the Big Brother that author George Orwell foretold in 1984. Corporations such as Google and Facebook don’t need the heavy-handed tactics of past surveillance states. They offer free services, help themselves to details about all facets of your life, and sell that data to marketers, law enforcement, politicians, and intelligence agencies. Hartmann outlines the dangers of surveillance capitalism and describes efforts to keep big tech in check. He warns that whoever has access to this much data can control people’s behavior on a large scale.

Take-Aways

• A new type of surveillance state is spreading throughout the world.
• Today’s technology offers an array of data-gathering tools.
• Databases prove useful for controlling people and profiting from them.
• Governments are major purchasers of personal data.
• Authoritarian governments use surveillance data to impose control.
• Officials have introduced legislation to rein in the power of Big Tech.

Summary

A new type of surveillance state is spreading throughout the world.

The fictional dystopia of George Orwell’s 1984 is becoming a reality. The novel’s repressive Big Brother government surveilled and aimed to control its citizens’ activities, speech, and thoughts.

“[A] tiny group of fabulously wealthy people has unmatched power to direct our economy and our government, as well as our society, our norms, and our culture as a whole.”

Today’s version of Big Brother takes the form of surveillance capitalism, as giant technology companies collect vast troves of data on their customers’ behaviors. Then, they sell the information they glean from that data to marketers, political campaigns, and government agencies.

Today’s technology offers an array of data-gathering tools.

Facebook has spent years amassing vast databases of its users’ personal information. Even people without Facebook accounts can’t escape scrutiny – affiliated websites report those who browse their domains to Facebook. Google’s search engine maintains a virtual dossier on your interests and activities by analyzing your search history.

“The old joke, that if you don’t have to pay for an online product, you are the product, barely scratches the surface.”

Another major avenue of data mining is the Internet of Things (IoT). Increasing numbers of “smart” consumer products connect to the internet and send data about consumer behavior to the products’ manufacturers. Smart thermostats or televisions monitor your usage behavior at home, while your smartphone surveils your actions in the world outside. Companies can assemble detailed files on intimate elements of your life, such as when you sleep, when you are home, and the state of your health. One consumer discovered, for example, that his CPAP machine was sending reports on the quality of his breathing to his insurance company.

Law enforcement and other government agencies use “vehicle data extraction kits” to mine the information in a car’s memory – including data on smartphones that connect to the car. With extraction technology, agencies such as US Customs and Border Protection can monitor where people go, whom they call, and what music they prefer.

Snoopers can suction the data from a cellphone by using a “stingray” device. This gadget mimics the presence of a cell tower, so nearby cell phones connect to it. Whoever plants the stingray has access to those phones’ data. Security found several stingrays of unknown origin in the area surrounding the White House. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 75 federal and state government agencies possess these devices.

“We’re partway down a dangerous road, in terms of both corporate and government Big Brothers, in ways that are incompatible with democracy.”

A number of companies now offer facial recognition technology. For example, Clearview AI built a database by collecting billions of images of people from Facebook and other social media. More than 3,000 law-enforcement agencies throughout the world use its app. Since at least 2014, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has used facial recognition technology to assemble files on people. Microsoft has introduced a facial-recognition product that it claims can establish a person’s identity and spot his or her emotions, such as “anger, contempt, disgust,” and “fear.”

Databases prove useful for controlling people and profiting from them.

In 2014, the US Federal Trade Commission reported on how the “data broker” industry functions. It found that these companies maintain profiles on almost all American consumers, showing such details as an individual’s name, address, Social Security number, age, employment, languages, criminal offenses, religion, home size (including the number of bathrooms), music preferences, recent online purchases, health issues, and even his or her use of homeopathic remedies.

“Data Big Brother exists only to profit by selling the most advanced and sophisticated social control tools that have ever existed.”

Such information is useful to a range of businesses. The data firms CoreLogic and TransUnion provide landlords with risk assessments of potential renters, drawing on such information as credit scores and eviction history. Most US employers purchase data to assess potential hires. Data analysis firms compile, score, and sell assessments of individual consumers from car and phone geolocation records and from logs of their online browsing behavior.

Some retail websites offer different prices to different consumers, depending on their assessments. Some stores refuse to do business with low-scoring consumers. The analysts’ methods for determining these scores are trade secrets, but consumers have no recourse for repairing their scores, even those based on incorrect information.

“The American free enterprise system has always been promoted as being founded and grounded in the notion of fairness and openness; Big Data has blown that all to hell.”

Marketers and retailers use personal data to create targeted advertising. When an analytics firm places a “cookie” on an individual’s web browser, the firm’s clients can send that person ads that will show up as the person browses, no matter where he or she goes online. Advertisers have always tried to target likely prospects, but have never before been able to operate with such extreme precision.

A notorious episode from the 2016 US presidential election shows how precise such targeting can be. The company Cambridge Analytica surreptitiously suctioned data about millions of Americans from Facebook. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign used that data to craft different messages to extremely narrow demographic tranches of voters.

“What we thought was just a sophisticated new way to sell us trinkets and lifestyle products has turned out to be a powerful technique to twist governance itself.”

A Wired magazine article reported that the campaign ran as many as 50,000 variants of its ads every day. Most of these ads escaped public scrutiny: Because the campaign delivered its messages via email and brief social media appearances, these messages were visible – most of the time – only to the tightly targeted audience that marketers chose.

Governments are major purchasers of personal data.

Espionage and law-enforcement agencies regularly buy data about their own citizens and citizens of foreign nations. In the United States, regulations restrain government agencies from spying on residents without a warrant. But US laws do not restrain Big Tech companies from such surveillance or forbid the government from purchasing surveillance data from these companies. The US government is now one of Big Tech’s biggest customers.

Law enforcement entities around the United States pay for access to databases that include such information about individuals as their face prints and DNA data, as well as the names of people with whom they associate and where they travel. The busiest users of such data appear to be local police departments and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“As a result [of disinformation], neofascist ethnonationalism not only has seized tens of millions of people in the United States but is spreading like a virus across the rest of the world.”

Governments use the internet for espionage, to spread disinformation, and to carry out sabotage. The United States and Israel were likely behind a 2010 scheme that placed malware on the computers controlling Iran’s nuclear enrichment systems. In response, Iran bolstered its cyberwarfare capabilities. The country subsequently launched attacks that wiped out the computers of a Saudi oil company and invaded the control system of a dam in New York State.

After the assault on the dam, a Wall Street Journal article pointed out that much of America’s infrastructure is vulnerable to online incursions. Between 2012 and 2014, Russia hacked into industrial control systems across the United States, infecting software updates for hydroelectric dams, nuclear power stations, and pipelines.

“I think the No. 1 [type of] attacks that our country will have will be precisely disinformation because the cost is so low and the value is so high.” (former Google CEO Eric Schmidt)

Russia and other nations also have attacked the United States with disinformation campaigns. Targeting audiences on social media, these forces stir up societal divisions by spreading bizarre conspiracy theories. Such messages have charged that vaccines are tools for mind control.

Commercial disinformation services are now open for business. For a price, they will spread whatever divisive lies their clients want to disseminate through social media. The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab has uncovered a number of services that are pushing memes and alternative facts for authoritarian governments. These services provide their clients with a valuable level of deniability.

Authoritarian governments use surveillance data to impose control.

Dictatorial governments make no attempt to hide their surveillance because when people know it is there, they internalize fear of breaking government rules. People change their general behavior, conforming to laws and norms when they know someone is watching.

Worldwide, people know big data is watching them. A New York Times article on teenagers’ spring break behavior offers a vivid illustration of the interaction of surveillance and behavior. The annual event used to be a wild spree of partying, drinking, and sex, but it has become more sedate in the age of smartphones and social media.

“If you can control the behavior of the voters, whether you’re Rupert Murdoch, Comcast, or a group with an ax to grind seeding Facebook, you can control the behavior of the government.”

Repressive regimes use surveillance to promote conformity and obedience. China, for example, uses facial recognition to track citizens’ activities and emotional states. China harvests data from police, social media, banks, and commerce sites to calculate a “social credit score” for each citizen. The score determines everything from people’s freedom of movement to their access to the best schools and jobs. Chinese people with high scores enjoy shorter wait times at hospitals or doctor’s offices, as well as discounts on products and services.

Officials have introduced legislation to rein in the power of Big Tech.

In 2008, Illinois passed the Biometric Information Privacy Act. It requires companies that collect or compile face prints, fingerprints, retina scans, and other biometric data to notify the people from whom they collect data and to secure their consent to collect and use the information. Such companies must tell each person why they collected the data, how they will use it, and how long they will keep it. Illinois’s law is unique. Tech industry lobbyists have blocked similar legislation in other states.

“The goal of those who violate privacy and use surveillance is almost always social control and behavior modification.”

Subsequently, in response to the government’s practice of purchasing surveillance data from private companies, a bipartisan group of senators and representatives introduced the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act. Tech and data companies have responded with aggressive lobbying.

In 2020, using facial recognition technology and security camera images, Detroit police arrested the wrong man in a robbery case. After The New York Times reported on the foul-up, several members of Congress introduced the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act. Subsequently, two senators introduced the National Biometric Information Privacy Act, which mandates that businesses must get people’s consent before harvesting or using biometric information. Big Tech’s lobbying power means that passing such laws requires considerable pressure from ordinary citizens.

The European Union has taken the lead in digital privacy protection with its General Data Protection Regulation. It stipulates the circumstances under which a company can collect citizens’ data, how much data they can collect, and how they can use it. It establishes citizens’ rights to demand that a company delete their data.

“As the key elements of a corporate-police state are being constructed all around us, it’s more important than ever to take stock of Big Brother and get his most dangerous potential actions under control.”

Tech companies have grown to a tremendous scale, with lobbying power that dwarfs even the big oil companies’ reach. In earlier times, no company could have accrued such monopolistic power. But since the 1980s, regulators and the Supreme Court have defanged antitrust enforcement. As a result, four companies control more than 70% of the internet service provider market: Google owns the search sector, Microsoft and Apple dominate operating systems, and Facebook and Twitter [now X] make up the majority of social media.

The most effective way to limit Big Data’s power is to break up the giant internet companies. Breaking up the behemoths wouldn’t eliminate data collection in the tech sector, but the resulting smaller companies would probably specialize in data niches, rather than striving to learn, gather, and know everything. Monitoring and regulating the activities of such boutique services would probably be easier, while private individuals would likely amass more power to prohibit collection of their data.

About the Author

Thom Hartmann is the host of The Thom Hartmann Program, an internationally syndicated talk show. He is also the author of Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-being and ADHD Secrets of Success: Coaching Yourself to Fulfillment in the Business World. He has also written a series of other Hidden History books, including histories of neoliberalism, the Supreme Court, monopolies, American health care, American oligarchies, and guns and the Second Amendment.