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- cross-posted to:
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A Controversial US Surveillance Program May Get Slipped Into a ‘Must-Pass’ Defense Bill.::Congressional leaders are discussing ways to reauthorize Section 702 surveillance, including by attaching it to the National Defense Authorization Act, Capitol Hill sources tell WIRED.
Dude, I bought a pair of Bose headphones yesterday. I get the home and the first thing they try to get me to do is download their app. Of course, sketchy (to me, anyway). So I dive into the “cookies/tracking data” section, which links me to the “privacy policy” which links me AGAIN to “information we collect and how”—all different documents with their own tables of contents. Legally binding documents.
They get people to sign away their rights to ANY privacy. They can “map your head movements” and what seemed to be…the shape of your head(?), they can PASSIVELY LISTEN TO ANY SOUND “around you,” they can intercept any any all information that passes through the headphones/microphone, record all biometrics…
Needless to say, I didn’t download the app. But these were the best headphones I’d ever put in my ears, right out of the box. So I went onto the SMS chat (while they were the best, the pair I had were defective)…and the first message I get is…A GODDAMN LINK TO A DIFFERENT PRIVACY POLICY. “Simplified” so it seemed like I was just giving them permission to record the SMS conversation “for training purposes,” but THANK FUCKIN GOD I dug deeper, BACK INTO THE MAZE OF SUBCLAUSES AND OBSCURED LINKS AND SEPARATE DOCUMENTS to find that they were trying to get me to sign THE ORIGINAL GODDAMN PRIVACY POLICY. And all I had to do was REPLY IN THE CHAT. That would’ve been apparently my consent.
So I called, because I wanted to use these headphones. They were so perfect. I asked to speak to the legal dept, if I can use the headphones without SOMEHOW, their privacy policy surreptitiously taking effect/being tacitly agreed to.
Well, you can’t reach the legal dept. so fuck it. Fuck BOSE, fuck these great headphones. I’ll suffer inferior headphones if I can’t be promised that I don’t sign away my organs and/or all possible information.
For good measure
FUCK YOU BOSE.
Oh yeah, my point was that they are taking everything they can, at all times. We are giving up everything. We’ve lost this battle. Big time. And we paid for it. Literally. Those headphones were $200 ON FUCKIN SALE. Goddamn, I hate capitalism and the modern world.
That’s crazy, but believable. I have a pair of Bose 700’s kicking around that one of my kids uses, but they don’t have the app. I wonder how they can potentially consent for data collection without breaking any data collection laws.
I mean. They put out all the disclaimers, collect the data anyway, and if they get sued they bury the person suing in paper, or if the person looks like they might wind up effecting a ruling that changes the legal interpretation in a way that is disadvantageous to the company, they settle out of court.
That way the courts never change the interpretation of the laws in a way that harms them, and bought politicians won’t do that. Plus a company that can legally record you can also just freely share those recordings with the police, so politicians aren’t going to impede that.
Things will get very funny in a few years when “AI” gets cheap enough that all those recordings wind up processed, tagged, and automatically shared with law enforcement or marketers.
It’s only a matter of time before saying “I want pizza” in the privacy of your own home results in a text from a national pizza chain.
To bring this back around to the NSA, they’re prevented by law to do data collection on American citizens who fall outside the exceptions like this FISA bill. The one loophole is that private companies have much more leeway in whose private information they can collect, and NSA can use American tax dollars to buy your personal information that’s illegal for them to collect themselves. Now NSA is a military intelligence organization and they’re not supposed to toss their intercepts over to US law enforcement like the FBI, but they do.
So we’re paying for it twice. Paying the companies as we sign their contracts blindly because we have the product in our hands and then we pay the companies AGAIN with all of our goddamn tax dollars.
Fuck capitalism