How The Government Tracks Your Life
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It's insanely easy to procure extremely sensitive information about virtually anyone with an online presence or without one. Welcome back to Free Speech Friday. Every moment that you're online, you're feeding a vast invisible machine called the data harvesting industry. Every tiny action that you take generates a massive trail of data. Companies are tracking your eye movements, how long you linger on an image,

and even your keystroke rhythms. The offline world has become just as invasive. Cameras in stores monitor your expressions and movements. Loyalty cards log your every purchase. Smart devices eavesdrop from your living room. Google collects over 72 million data points on a single user alone annually.

the average American is being unknowingly recorded by over 75 digital tracking tools per day. This is the price of surveillance capitalism. But it's not just corporations that want this data. You know who this type of data is really valuable to? The U.S. government. U.S. intelligence agencies are now buying up vast amounts of

highly sensitive personal data on regular people, essentially the stuff that would have previously required a court order in order to bypass the Fourth Amendment. And if all that wasn't crazy enough, now the government is doing something even more extreme. Because there's so much highly detailed data for sale on so many Americans and it's

literally overwhelming corporations and data brokers themselves, the government is building a centralized platform that basically acts as a one-stop shop for spy agencies to buy as much private information as they want on millions of Americans. Sam Biddle at The Intercept broke this story, and I...

I can't stress how what's happening is so insane. The government is basically seeking to build this system to completely centralize and streamline the use of commercially available information like location data from mobile ads or social media posts.

They want to take all of this information that corporations are collecting all day long on unsuspecting users, centralize it into this one government-controlled system, and then allow spy agencies to access it via a web portal. The government is also talking about allowing law enforcement to run the data through AI tools for analysis. And this isn't just your name and address. This is highly, highly important.

highly, highly personal and sensitive data. This is the stuff that even the government itself acknowledges could, quote, be misused to cause substantial harm, embarrassment, and inconvenience to U.S. persons. Emily Ayub, a lawyer with the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program, said, quote, in practice, the data consortium would provide a one-stop shop for government agencies to cheaply

purchase access to vast amounts of Americans sensitive information from commercial entities, sidestepping constitutional and statutory privacy protections. Spy agencies and military intelligence offices have freely purchased sensitive personal information for a long time.

Buying information off data brokers is much easier than having to go through the process of obtaining a warrant and getting a judge's sign off to collect the data correctly. Because we have essentially zero data privacy laws in the US, unscrupulous advertisers and app makers are working in a regulatory vacuum.

There's basically no oversight and it's insanely easy to procure extremely sensitive information about virtually anyone with an online presence or without one. Smartphones leave behind a vast trove of sensitive personal data, including detailed records of your exact movements that can be bought and sold by anyone willing to pay.

This is information that the government has previously claimed "could be used to cause harm to a person's reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety." Documents reviewed by The Intercept make it clear that this government project is designed to provide access to the

highest sensitive tier of data. These documents also reveal the type of data that the government is seeking to collect in more detail. They show that the government is looking to obtain things like smartphone location pings, real estate records, biometric data, and social media content.

The document also laments how often various spy agencies are already buying the same data without realizing it. Callie Schroeder, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Project, told The Intercept, quote, The government is still adhering to the just grab it all and we'll find something to do with it mentality rather than being remotely thoughtful about only collecting data that it needs or has a specific envisioned use for.

Once this portal is up and running, the procurement materials say that the portal will eventually allow government agents to analyze the data using large language models. This is particularly horrifying given how AI-based text tools are so prone to major factual errors and complete fabrications.

The portal will also allow the feds to facilitate sentiment analysis, a pseudoscientific practice that claims to be able to deduce someone's opinion about any given topic using vague signals in their behavior, movement, or speech. The fact that the government wants to run this type of bogus analysis on private U.S. citizens is a

huge cause for concern, according to Schroeder. She said, quote, it means the intelligence community is still to at least some degree buying into the false promise of a constantly and continuously debunked practice. Let me be clear. Sentiment analysis not only does not work, it cannot work.

Its only consistent success has been in perpetuating harmful discrimination of gender, culture, race, and neurodivergence among others. Trying to use flawed and broken AI tools as a type of crystal ball into massive datasets

poses serious risks. Ayub said, quote, AI tools make it easier to extract, re-identify, and infer sensitive information about people's identities, locations, ideologies, and habits, amplifying risks to Americans' privacy and freedoms of speech and association. On top of that, these tools are a black box with little insight into training data, metric, or reliability of outcomes. The intelligence community's use of these tools typically comes with high

with high risk, questionable track records and little accountability, especially now that AI policy safeguards were rescinded early in the Trump administration. In 2023, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence actually declassified a 37 page report detailing the vastly expanding use of consumer data by the US intelligence community and the threat that this poses to millions of Americans. We are all having every single aspect of our lives

tracked, cataloged, packaged, and sold by a galaxy of unregulated data brokers. The report read, quote, "Today, in a way that far, far fewer Americans seem to understand and even fewer of them can avoid, commercially available information includes information on nearly everyone that is a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained, if at all, only through targeted and predicted collection."

And this data could be used to cause harm to an individual's reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety. In 2021, for instance, The Intercept reported on Anomaly 6, a startup that buys commercially available geolocation data leaked from smartphone apps. In a presentation, Anomaly 6 showed that it had the ability to track not only the Chinese Navy through the smartphones of its sailors, but also follow CIA and NSA employees as they commuted to and from work.

I just want to take a step back and talk about data privacy for a second, because I think the surveillance infrastructure that we've normalized is really, really disturbing, especially when you think of what the government can get access to. For instance, the government would have never been able to compel millions of people to carry location tracking devices on themselves 24/7 or compel them to log and track the minute details of every single social interaction.

or keep precise records of every single news item that they read and maybe share with a family member. But because we have no data privacy, that's essentially what we've normalized. Even the Office of the Director of National Intelligence noted in its 2022 report that, quote, "Unfettered access to commercially available information and data increases its power in ways that may exceed our constitutional traditions or other societal expectations."

Obviously, the government getting access to this sort of highly personal and detailed data, especially years worth of it, is terrifying under the Trump administration. And Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is already working on building and streamlining access to other large repositories of sensitive information.

In March, the Washington Post reported that Doge workers were trying to break down information silos across the federal government and trying to unify systems into one central hub aimed at advancing multiple Trump administration priorities, including finding and deporting undocumented immigrants.

The documents note that this new data portal will also be accessible to a wide variety of government agencies, basically anyone who wants it, not just the national defense and intelligence organizations. And I just want you guys to know that this is not a Republican or Democrat problem. This entire centralized government data portal project actually began under Joe Biden.

Ayub told The Intercept that this portal will undeniably quote, "raise the risk that agencies like DHS's Homeland Security investigations would access the database to identify and target non-citizens such as student protesters based on their search or browsing histories and location information." Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who's the only member of Congress who has any like

vague concept of good tech policy, has been a longtime critic of these sorts of efforts. He said, quote, I'm concerned about what the government is actually doing with the data of Americans that it buys from data brokers. All indications from news reports and Trump administration officials are that Americans should be extremely worried about how this administration may be using commercial data. And I know people's eyes glaze over when I start talking about things like tech policy and data privacy, but these are some of the

most important issues of our time, and we have to fight back against this gross government overreach. This episode is brought to you by Delete Me. As a high-profile journalist who's dealt with stalking, harassment, and death threats, I know how crucial it is to protect your personal information. Unfortunately, no matter how careful you are, data brokers will collect and sell your personal information to anyone willing to pay for it. This includes your name, address, phone number, and more. And when someone

When someone buys your data through a data broker, they don't just see you. They see your spouse, your kids, your family members, and loved ones. Removing this information off the internet helps protect against things like identity theft and stalking. But how do you even remove this information when there are thousands of data brokers? DeleteMe is a subscription service that automatically removes your personal information being sold online. It's been an absolute game changer for me as somebody that values privacy.

DeleteMe scours the internet for your information and automatically handles takedown requests. They provide regular privacy reports so you can see exactly how much data they found on you, where it was found, and where it was removed. You can even make custom removal requests. Their family plans are especially critical because when you're targeted, your loved ones usually are too. Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans when you go to joindelete.com/Taylor20 and use my code Taylor20 at checkout.

That's joindeleteme.com/Taylor20. Use code Taylor20 at checkout. Don't wait until it's too late to safeguard your privacy. Make sure that your data and your family's stays protected. I think a lot of you might also be listening and feeling like, well, so what? I don't have anything to hide. Who cares if I'm not doing anything wrong or illegal? What's the harm of zillions of corporations and the government having unlimited access to my data?

This type of nihilistic sentiment, I think, has become incredibly pervasive, especially among young people. And I get it because the whole problem just feels so incredibly overwhelming. The data harvesting industry is so massive and sprawling and monstrous, and it can feel like there's nothing that we can do. But this mindset is dangerously naive.

It is exactly what allows mass surveillance and data abuse to flourish unchecked. And I think a lot of you might not realize exactly how much data is being collected and what entities like the government can do with that data. Your location, your search history, your relationships, your habits, like literally everything can be weaponized and misinterpreted by the state in ways that most people simply cannot imagine until it's too late.

And it's essential to understand that mass data collection doesn't stay passive. The government doesn't just like buy all of this information and then just sit on it.

it. It uses it in unpredictable and often irreversible ways. One of the most chilling aspects of a centralized government access to commercially available data is pre-crime logic. And that's this idea that predictive policing algorithms can use data to determine who might commit a crime or who might be a threat before they even do anything.

This turns everyone into a suspect and your movements, your online behavior, your social connections all become data points in opaque equation that could trigger your name being added to a no-fly list or lead to you being denied a visa or suffering an immigration raid or worse. And because the surveillance is increasingly powered by AI, these decisions are not even

being made by human investigators, they're just being done by these like vague, unaccountable algorithms. These types of systems are notoriously error prone and biased, especially against marginalized groups. Sentiment analysis, predictive policing, emotion detection. This is like

the worst kind of junk science. And the fact that government institutions with real power are seeking to leverage this stuff is so disturbing. Once you've been flagged or profiled, there's also usually no way to appeal or even understand why, because these AI algorithms and systems are just usually a giant black box.

And even if you personally aren't unfairly targeted, you should be disturbed by the precedent that this type of thing sets. What happens when dissent is inherently criminalized or controversial opinions are enough to trigger scrutiny from some government algorithm? We've already seen law enforcement use things like geolocation data to identify protesters. We've seen federal agencies create social media watch lists.

In a world where the government can buy access to years and years of your digital life, including location pings, conversations, health information, purchases, and photos, how can we speak freely? And while you might feel safe now, who's to say that the next administration or the one after that won't see your religion, sexuality, or politics as a threat? History offers endless examples of governments targeting specific communities during times of political instability. And with this

With this type of centralized data infrastructure already in place, future crackdowns won't even require building new systems. They can just flip on a switch or run an algorithm. It's also worth highlighting that even without malicious intent, mistakes happen. People are wrongly placed on watch lists all the time. The no-fly list is notoriously ensnared innocent travelers due to name similarities or algorithmic errors.

Imagine the scale of damage when millions of people are subjected to automated scrutiny using far more detailed, sensitive and invasive data. There's no due process with algorithmic surveillance, by the way. Homeland Security doesn't just like read you your Miranda rights before seizing your location history. They just

quietly purchase it from corporations. And these surveillance tools never stay confined to serious threats. What starts as counterterrorism efforts ends up being used in evictions, immigration crackdowns, and political intimidation. Even if you're a law-abiding citizen, there's no guarantee that your data won't be caught in the dragnet and used to make decisions about your life without your consent and awareness.

There's also the risk of abuse by insiders. Thousands of government employees and contractors will potentially have access to this centralized database. Just look at how many times police officers have been caught using surveillance tools to spy on exes or stalk targets. Now imagine what a bad actor could do with years of your digital life. The potential for abuse, blackmailing, and harassment is truly staggering. And then there's the most obvious concern. What if this system gets hacked?

Centralizing data into a single portal creates a single point of failure. The US government has a long track record of catastrophic data breaches. If this portal becomes a one-stop shop for some of the most sensitive information on Americans, it's literally only a matter of time before it gets breached.

Data privacy is central to free speech and expression. Protecting our data and fighting surveillance capitalism is essential if we want to be able to read, speak, and protest freely. We should all be deeply concerned that the government is quietly creating the infrastructure for total surveillance, sidestepping constitutional protections, and using commercial loopholes to normalize this type of behavior.

I'll be talking about all of this more soon in a series I have coming down the line. But in the meantime, I hope we can all push our lawmakers for real comprehensive data privacy legislation. We should ban government purchases of commercial surveillance data without a warrant and insist on transparency and accountability for government AI tools.

And instead of uniting to push dangerous censorship bills like the Kids Online Safety Act or age verification laws that mandate companies collect even more data, we need our lawmakers to join together and push for comprehensive data privacy laws now.

Thanks again to Delete.me for sponsoring this episode. To help get your data removed from the internet, check out Delete.me via the link in the description and use code Taylor20 at checkout for 20% off consumer plans. That's it for this week's Free Speech Friday. Don't forget to subscribe to my tech and online culture newsletter, usermag.co. That's usermag.co where I write about all of these issues and more.

If you're listening to this show on a podcast platform, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. My bestselling book, Extremely Online, is also finally out on paperback now. It's available wherever books are sold. It has a brand new cover. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Free Speech Friday. See you then.