If you don't mind me asking what is so important about privacy?
If you don't mind me asking what is so important about privacy?
What harm does public data have to you? Couldn't one just ignore the ads? You can't see anyone watching you, is public data good for public records? (I'm just curious). I know this sounds weird but is public data good for historical preservation and knowledge increasing the importance of the individual? And does public data lead to better products?
Privacy brings security under totalitarian regimes or in countries that shift in that direction. They might say if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, but there are unjust conditions under which you have to hide things, like that you belong to minority that is targeted by the authorities. Like the nazis did in the third reich, where privacy was reduced during their takeover. Or that you belong to a party that is suddenly framed as evil and enemies of the nation. Or if you have connections to "traitors" or other "scum".
This was a reply I posted on "What should I say when someone says they "don't have anything to hide"?" In ask Lemmy a week ago, and I think it's still applicable here
They don't choose what they need to hide, if their government outlaws woodworking tomorrow, then any carpenters today go from "having nothing to hide" to "I need to hide my entire career and hobby" overnight and in their sleep.
And then the government threatens Facebook to hand over messages from any user suspected of woodworking, and then they get persecuted and arrested
The government threatens Google to hand over all browser history from suspected woodworkers, Apple for all iCloud photos from suspected woodworkers, Amazon for all woodworking related purchases
It goes on
If the carpenter cared about privacy from the start, then the government just wouldn't be able to find them and arrest them for simply woodworking
But the carpenter didn't care about privacy, they "had nothing to hide" yesterday, so when that law goes into effect tomorrow the government will have a really easy time finding them
Well...
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Target once used small amounts of shopping data to accurately predict women were pregnant before they themselves knew.
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A Nebraska PD got data from Facebook to prove a woman had an abortion recently and prosecuted her.
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you don't know what will become illegal
So, even small amounts of data can predict lots of things about your life. The government has a track record of using that data to prosecute you. And you cannot trust the Government will always align with your morals (assuming it even does right now).
And that doesn't even consider other entities & organizations in the world.
What if an insurance company wants uses public data about you to deny you coverage? What if someone is searching for people in the area with ideal houses to rob and you're on vacation? What if they use a deepfake of a loved one to scam you? Steal your identity and ruin your credit? What if they make and sell deepfake porn made of you or a loved one? What if they create meticulously engineered political psyop campaigns hand-tailored to exploit your psychology? What if this list of "what ifs" could go on nearly forever, and some "what ifs" aren't even things we're capable of knowing about?
Because that last one is absolutely true, all the rest of those are true for someone, and at least one of them is probably true for you already.
Ok, but what if you don't care?...well someone else in your life does. And even if they have impeccable data privacy habits, if enough of their friends and family don't, then they're just a single missing puzzle piece, and everyone can still see their shape.
Not to mention, you contribute to a pool of data that's used to perform these kinds of analyses on society at large, meaning you contribute in some part to each and every instance of malicious data use towards anyone, anywhere.
Is that a good enough reason to care?
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puts on tinfoil hat
You know how women (and some doctors) had problems in the US because the states were getting information on whether they had, were thinking of having, or were having conversations about having an abortion?
You know how there was a possibility (or maybe that really happened, I don't remember) that the state governments could be aquiring information from women's period tracking apps and acquiring their behavioral patterns to find out if they were planning on having an abortion?
Well, I'm not a woman, but I am disabled. After I got fired from my job because I couldn't perform anymore thanks to my disability, (there was no discrimination, I literally could not do my job because of my disability) I applied for disability payment.
I was rejected.
After that, I tried to look for other jobs, but for some strange reason, I couldn't find a job ANYWHERE in the US. They never called back after telling me they would do a background check on me. I applied for about 70+ companies, I got background checks on 20+.
That didn't happen before I applied for the disability payments, and as an immigrant that was below the poverty line I wasn't someone that could put up a fight... Against whom? The companies? The government? I didn't even know if the fact that I applied for the disability payments was the problem.
At the end, I was able to find a job in a call center working from home. But it took me 8 months for that.
takes off tinfoil hat
It's a double edged sword, youcan make better products and a better experience for some things, but some people/companies think of other people, especially minorities, disabled, and probably women, as liabilities, and they don't really want that.
This is why I rather have privacy, the ads are just annoying asf, but the things I said are just 2 examples of why privacy is important.
Hopefully I make sense, and sorry for any grammatical mistakes, English is not my first language.
How confident are you that this stolen private data won't become a tool against you at some point ? I'm not talking about hackers and impersonators (which are huge problems on their own), but anything you do could be used against you in a fascist regime.
If the records of Jewish people didn't exist prior to WW2, the Jew extermination wouldn't have been so easy. To consider that what you do or who you are won't be something you or your descendants would be oppressed for in the future is a very dangerous bet.
By protecting my privacy I'm not taking any chances, and it's actually making my life better through not being targeted by ads. Why would I do things differently?
Every comment here is missing a crucial point. The data is used to identify what kind of person you are and then manipulate you based on that. It's not just to target specific ads to you. It is to control how you behave in any way that will profit them. An example of what has been done is to identify democrats that were unlikely to be convinced to switch to republican, so instead they targeted them with content that would get them to not vote at all.
Privacy is a form of dignity. You don't close the bathroom door because you have something to hide. Everybody knows what you're doing in there, but you close the door anyway to preserve your dignity.
The same reason I close my doors.
“Can’t you just ignore the ads?” No. No you can’t. Ads aren’t tucked away in the corner of a page, waiting for your focus. They are invasive and built solely to attract attention; even compete for it. So no, you can’t ignore them anymore than you can ignore a 3y old wailing 3 ft from your ear.
Information is power. And someone will exploit it. That’s human nature. Create an innocuous database of how high people can jump and that data will be exploited. Somehow. Someone will use it for their own gains. Does that fundamentally hurt you? Maybe. Maybe not. But there is always a risk of having information put to nefarious use.
Best to just never get there as a society.
Here in the States your data can not only be used to trace where you live, and who your loved ones are, but also how to assure you will be convicted of an imprisonable offense, given the average American commits three felonies a day (mostly violations of the CFAA. If you're not a pro-authority fascist, espionage and conspiracy can often be tossed in to extend your sentence.)
For most of us American shlubs, it's not a big deal. If you're a ten year old girl and make your own Facebook page (that's a felony) no one is going to care much...
...unless you have significant liquidatable assets known to law enforcement.
...unless you cross the police on an unlucky day and one of them holds a grudge.
...unless you have enemies in high places, say, a state senator.
...or unless an official wants your real property / intellectual property / spouse and you're in the way.
Then, yeah, it's a matter of finding something that will convince a judge or jury that you need to be locked away. And if you are as privacy-conscious as a typical US citizen, they will find something. Maybe something even worth sending a SWAT team to serve your warrant over.
For me personally, its for a variety of reasons
1: Targeted ads and algorithms and such are typically used to manipulate you to feel a certain way or hold opinions you may otherwise not have. This has been demonstrated and shown to happen several times, such as with Cambridge Analytica, and its pretty concerning. I want to see things for myself and form my own opinions, not just being manipulated to believe what some big tech company or advertisers or the like want me to think.
2: Just think about all the data a lot of these companies can and are collecting on you. For instance, if you're on a regular fully Googled Android phone, Google pretty much has access to your physical location at all times. What possible need is there for this? Why does Google always need to know where I am? Just looking at it simply, its none of their business, and no justifiable reason for them to know it. There's no possible benefit or good thing that could come out of Google knowing my wheareabouts 24/7. If there's no reason for them to know the info, why give them it on a silver platter?
3: The data being collected is also usually handled very poorly as seen through constant data breaches of sensitive information and the like, and can also be easily abused in general. I myself have been personally targetted and stalked, and the stalker got mine and my family's information from data broker websites. Its pretty scary the amount of information these companies collect and share and make freely available about you, and it can be easily used against you.
4: Another example of the data being collected being misused is for example what's happening in China, with the social credit system. The social credit system basically determines what you can do and everything about your life, such as job opportunities and employment, access to finance and banks, ability to travel, and a lot more, based off a variety of factors, from things like what you post or do online, to even who you're friends with, and more. While you may argue that this is just China and there's nothing to worry about, similar systems to this are already being worked on and tried by US employers and companies, and there's nothing stopping things comparable to the social credit system from happening or being put in place in the West or elsewhere in this current surveillence capitalism world we live in. Something like this happening should absolutely concern you.
5: People have straight up had their lives ruined as a result of this mass data collection and privacy invasiveness. For instance, I remember hearing a story of a man who shared his Google account with his uncle. His uncle murdered someone, with his Googled Android phone in his possession, and Google provided the location data and such to the police, and instead the nephew was accused of the crime, and basically had his entire life ruined because of it, over something he didn't even do. Just look at what's going on now with abortion in some states in the US for another example. Its pretty scary to think about things like this happening, as it really could happen to anyone.
At the end of the day, these companies like Facebook and Google aren't your friends. Trust is earned, and I don't think any of these big tech companies earn it based off their actions and track record. What I do and how I live my life is none of their business or concern, and that's how I feel about it, and wish more people would see it the same way, or at least put some thought into it instead of blindly accepting mass surveillance and data collection.
(Hopefully this all makes sense and wasn't too rambly, pretty tired rn lol)
No offence, but I don't know how people are still asking this question with the amount of large scale data breaches that are happening these days. People are having all their money, maybe even their entire identity, stolen by criminals who have access to their data via these breaches. Just recently an Australian woman was ordered by US courts to pay Adidas and the NBA $1.2 million because criminals gained access to her PayPal account through a data breach and used it to commit fraud.
Privacy isn't just some abstract idea - there can be real world consequences for those who trust governments and companies with large amounts of their personal data. That's why so many of us look to limit our digital attack surface by opting out of data collection and/or choosing privacy respecting alternatives where possible.
But to be clear, it isn't solely about direct harm right now. Personally I believe everyone should have the right to privacy both online and offline, so I choose not to assist governments and corporations that seek to erode that right. This point doesn't get made much, because normies don't understand why something is important unless you can directly show it impacting their life, but it is arguably more important than any of the direct harm stuff. Even if the realistic threat to me is minimal, I will still continue to advocate for privacy because I believe it is the right thing to do.
You give company A your data for a service. They provide you that service. However, unknown to you they sell your data to company B to make a few bucks. You did not authorize this, you did not know about this, you don't know who company B is, and you have no idea to what purpose company B will put your data to. Best to not have this happen by not giving the data to company A to begin with.
i think women who want the freedom to decide what they can do with their own bodies shows you how important privacy is. the was a cop in california sending out of state licenses to the home state governmemt to report women crossi g state lines for abortions.
Marketing use alone fucks the world up with peoples data.
I am not a product for these corporations to sell.
If your data is available to the public, people can also learn your behaviour, likes and dislikes. From that information
- Authorities can coerce you to do something you do not want to do (like make a false claim) because if you don't they can use your dislikes and deny your likes to make you suffer until you relent
- Advertisers can push advertisements of things you like and make you spend a lot more
- Thieves will know when is the most likely time that you and your family be at home and break in during those times
I just came across this link on social cooling from another post a few days ago. The amount of information that can be gathered on you is frightening. I just want to be able to control my own data rather than it being taken from me.
Edit: This was also a super interesting read on what privacy actually is as a concept as well as analyzing the social balance of privacy and security.
Imagine an insurance company using data about you that it purchased from FB or Twitter to give you different insurance rates.
Or your social posts or posts tagged of you affecting your credit score or job application or even your rent application.
There are so many scenarios where having your privacy respected would protect you from unnecessary and unfair judgement.
I'm in no means an expert here, but over the last 10 years or so, I've been trying to learn as much as I can. I am still in the boat of trying to find meaningful, impactful ways of explaining to people around me, why they should care about privacy.
Here's what I would challenge anyone who takes the time to read this to do. Choose a random user in this thread. Any one of them. Go to their profile page, and see what you can learn about that person based on comment/post history.
Did you get an idea of where in the world they live? The problems they're facing? The things they like? Now. Think like you were someone trying to harm/exploit them. Think of some products you could put in front of them that they could not live without.
Now we take that information, and start to put it together, we think, okay how do we manipulate this person into purchasing this thing.
Maybe we target a fake news article, stating "(target user's generation) choosing between paying rent and purchasing (target product)"
Now that person starts to think "whoa, in not the only one that's struggling with this decision, and others are choosing the purchase"
Now, maybe we target an influencer video to them, about how much better their lives are with that product.
Pretty soon, we put together a picture of how quickly and easily we could create an algorithm to manipulate someone into buying something that they would not have made the informed decision to buy. Now they value the product even if they can't afford it...
I'm literally realizing this as I'm typing it... And it kind of terrifies me.
All of this is completely ignoring the concern of government entities, with I'll intention, using the information against you...
A lot of people are giving good examples, and good answers. But I want to make an analogy instead.
Let's think back to the time before the internet. 1970s. If somebody wanted to know everything about you they needed to stalk you. And that was very time-consuming. They needed to follow you everywhere you go, they needed to read all of your mail before you opened it, they needed to look through your trash, they needed to talk to all your friends to get all the information about you. Having a stalker was a serious time commitment from the stalker.
Fast forward to today, stalking is now trivial, and cheap. Thanks to new technology, data aggregation, and data brokers, every single person has a virtual stalker following them 24/7 who is dirt cheap for anybody to hire. So what would have been a crazy stalker in the 1970s can be used by anybody now to learn everything about you and do anything to you. That includes the police, that includes advertisers, that includes power tripping angry exs.
In the 1970s if you had a stalker you had a serious problem and people would help you stop the stalker. Even if the stalker did nothing illegal the fact that they were focusing so intensely on you would be enough for everyone to realize you're in a bad situation. Today that's the norm. So privacy is basically saying you don't want a 24/7 stalker for hire following specifically you.
For me, it's identity theft.
I would add that privacy and security are related. If there is less data on you, it is harder to commit fraud against you.
With the data they could literally impersonate you, this data gets sold to shady assholes, the data is regularly leaked, most isn't public data but shit like your location, phone number or sometimes even credit card info.
Also, why should i allow anyone to know about me, im a literal ghost online, you can't find me, and thats good.
For me, it is about removing an attack vector crazy people might use. We live in a time where people can seek revenge for the pettiest things. In thepastt, I had gotten into an argument on reddit over something harmless and they doxxed me and sent a warning to my house. I deleted everything and overhauled my privacy.
There's plenty of reasons not to try and keep things private! It is a lot easier for comments on Lemmy, for example, to be public, rather than trying to make the discussion threads private among some set of authorized participants.
And if I am rating movies on Netflix, I really do want them to take my ratings and put them in a big machine learning pile to try and find me better movies. That's the point of rating the things.
But there's a big difference between me actually sharing information with people so they can do good, and people trying to collect information about me without my permission so that they can make money, or, worse, try to manipulate me later.
And even if the data is not in itself all that worthy of secrecy, and I might be willing to share it, someone else deciding for me that they get to follow me around and see what I am up to or what I like, without actually asking or without genuinely expecting that I might say no, is... not how consent works.
Also, some of the point of this is that one cannot in fact genuinely ignore advertisements. At the very least they constitute a cognitive load, where it is harder to do or see things because the advertisements are in the way. They can also hammer brand names and desired associations into people's heads, to ensure that most people know that e.g. X Brand Soda is the "luxury" soda. And of course in aggregate they cause people to buy things. Each person might choose to buy the thing of their own apparently free will, but running the ad will cause more people to make that decision than would otherwise.
Where they are most dangerous is when advertisements try and create problems, rather than just offering products. A sign that says "We sell Coke" is fine. Three commercials a day asking if you are guilty of "old-shoeing", the social faux pas of having old shoes, look at this man being laughed at for it, etc. are dangerous, even if they never try to sell a product.
These kinds of marketing campaigns are that much more effective if they can be targeted at the people who are the easiest to convince that made up problems are real. And while one's general personality is not exactly a secret, we also don't want scammers like this going around making lists of the particularly gullible.
Let's flip it. Why do people want data on you? why are people willing to pay for it? or governments deploy threats of fines (backed up by men with guns) or men with guns in order to force it's collection on you?
private companies feel like they can make money with it, that they can make you do things that are profitable (buy something you wouldn't, vote a certain way, decide against insuring you etc). Are you cleverer than teams of academics? I'm not.
Governments want it to enhance control. Sometimes that control can be benevolent but it's still control. Often it's not benevolent, selective enforcement of unjust laws against political opponents etc.
So why surrender privacy?
Privacy is important everywhere, people most often answer this question regarding digital privacy, but think about in your everyday life. For example, I just bought a house. Buying a house is public record here in the states. The moment you buy a house companies will grab that data and then start trying to sell you services. They will use the name of the bank that you took out a loan with, they know your loan number, loan type, loan amount, full name and address. They will do everything to misrepresent who they are as if they come from the bank that holds your loan to sign you up for some service you most likely don't want or don't need. Older people fall for it all the time. Digitally it just gets worse.
One problem is that you don't know who's actually hoarding your data and for what purpose.
In principle, anthropologically speaking, the depth and breadth of data that has been collected is at its face outstanding and valuable. The full range of human experience is documented. What can be learned if it were studied would perhaps help save the world.
Unfortunately, that "public" data is only available to the companies that harvest and buy it, not to the world at large. Not unless you are already in the shit that is collecting information on you
To echo what other people have said, any benefits of public data is immediately squashed by the heinous abuse of power that comes from not protecting privacy.
Information is freely given by those who care about the world and want to see it improve. No need to take away human rights for that.
Imagine that someone has made a false accusation about you and it becomes part of your online profile.
Within less than a day, maybe even before you aware of the claim, every major online database has marked you as being something that you are not.
Who do you call to correct it?
Will a correction fix it?
Will the false information even get deleted?
When you don't control the data, you are always vulnerable.
Because I find it unsettling on a personal level when my wife and I, in the privacy of our home away from the world have a conversation where we make a joke about buying a banjo, and then every day for the next three weeks everywhere I go is flooded with targeted banjo ads. Verbal conversations, away from everything but our phones and computers.
Because I find it unsettling when I go to a site I have never gone to before and it greets me with my name and already knows where I live with the shipping details even though I clicked "I do not consent" on every data pop-up that I've seen in the past five years.
Because people are selling that data, my data, data about myself, and I get none of that profit and it was done without my consent or knowledge.
Because a company having my information should be something I need to personally allow, not something I need to ask and beg them not to obtain.
Because I can think of very few, if any, benevolent purposes of using that data, but there is a legion of malevolent reasons for it, and of the ones I have seen, all of them fall into this category.
All this being said, I should not need to have a reason. The onus should not rest with the individual to prove that they deserve undisturbed privacy, it should rest with the institutions that want this information; that it is a requirement to obtain this information for valid reasons and not frivolous ones, or ones rooted in greed or ideology. Like a search warrant for example.
Personally, its more about something being taken from me without consent and the ramifications that might have on society. And down voting you for asking this question is not conducive to a long lasting community
Sometimes not even ignoring the ads is possible because they are vectors for malware as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising
There's a whole set of instances in the past where someone was innocently wanting to make a little money from their website, only to have all of their users infected with malware because of it. These instances utilized newly discovered exploits to run without interaction at all. Meaning you can't simply ignore them, even just browsing a page with them was enough to infect people.
Ads aren't just annoying, but they're a vector for malware. And even if they weren't, ignoring them isn't enough to get your brain not to notice them at all. You'll always subconsciously obtain associations of brands, etc. It's literally an invasion of your brain.
I didn't authorize a random company to have access to a treasure trove of data about me so I have to lock everyone out. If data about me is being sold someone is making money off my private information. Ads can and do contain malware and consume extra data which I again never agreed to.
These are very basic arguments but I hope this helps.
If the data was truly publicly available, such that anyone could make up ways to process the data and do useful things with it, then maybe that would be fine. As it is the data is locked behind paywalls - if it even is directly available at all. Businesses have collected this data for free, then they keep it to themselves and they build products and sell them for nearly pure profit. It's like they're building a car without paying for the nuts and bolts - and we provide the nuts and bolts.
Instead, ultimately the data is used against you in order to get you to buy more things. It's taken from you without your explicit consent or a reasonable exchange, and then it's used against you to your further detriment.
https://www.lakeshorepublicmedia.org/npr-news/npr-news/2023-01-21/she-was-denied-entry-to-a-rockettes-show-then-the-facial-recognition-debate-ignited
This is one of many examples where privacy should really help. Another example is Google blocking account (and with it all emails, calendar, ...) of father, who sent picture of his ill daughter to doctor during pandemic.i think women who want the freedom to decide what they can do with their own bodies shows you how important privacy is. the was a cop in california sending out of state licenses to the home state governmemt to report women crossi g state lines for abortions.
A lot of people are giving good examples, and good answers. But I want to make an analogy instead.
Let's think back to the time before the internet. 1970s. If somebody wanted to know everything about you they needed to stalk you. And that was very time-consuming. They needed to follow you everywhere you go, they needed to read all of your mail before you opened it, they needed to look through your trash, they needed to talk to all your friends to get all the information about you. Having a stalker was a serious time commitment from the stalker.
Fast forward to today, stalking is now trivial, and cheap. Thanks to new technology, data aggregation, and data brokers, every single person has a virtual stalker following them 24/7 who is dirt cheap for anybody to hire. So what would have been a crazy stalker in the 1970s can be used by anybody now to learn everything about you and do anything to you. That includes the police, that includes advertisers, that includes power tripping angry exs.
In the 1970s if you had a stalker you had a serious problem and people would help you stop the stalker. Even if the stalker did nothing illegal the fact that they were focusing so intensely on you would be enough for everyone to realize you're in a bad situation. Today that's the norm. So privacy is basically saying you don't want a 24/7 stalker for hire following specifically you.
Permanently Deleted
I have a mental illness that, while protected under the law, is heavily discriminated against. It's nice to be able to talk about my disability without my employer finding out.
Oh, the contempt with which people speak about their loved ones on the internet? Privacy allows that. It's really fun to watch (and provoke). I'd lose a source of entertainment.
The only thing that should be public are private business records if they affect critical national infrastructure as well as the lives of public servants and justices. Let the public regulate their own data because it is theirs. People’s habits are personal and are unique like a signature or DNA. I know it’s weird to say but it’s true. Watch people in the park and you’ll see. Apply that to your online life. People, especially profit seeking dirtbags, use that information to get over on you. There are no regulations to protect you and we all know for a fact they do no good until forced to.
If you think giving everyone a free email was a pious thing I got some news for you. Nothing is free online.
Information is power. Telecommunication have changed the landscape of business, warfare, and how we live. It allows us to make “better” decisions for what we set out to do. Whoever holds more information, and has the chops to analyze it, controls the board. The closer that information is to individual people, the sharper it is as a weapon.
Having power too concentrated in one place or a few has led to disastrous consequences in human history. Privacy is simply a way to hold that power back, so that the most sensitive information are kept away from unknown hands.
Privacy also allows us to be ourselves, in the sense that we have different fronts of ourselves. We have sides we don’t necessarily want to show to our parents, but we show it to our friends or spouse. Not everyone has the best of relationships with everyone around them, and so there are sides we don’t want everyone to know, lest they get used as a weapon against us, either for others to exploit, or hold us ransom. If you’d like an example, imagine having an overly possessive religious parent, and you’re an atheist, but you don’t want to confront your parent because you’d like to avoid trouble. When thought in that way, privacy is a right that humans should have, and it is each person’s right to release what information they have about themselves to whoever they wish.
Edit: if you think I'm a communist because of my name username look very closely at my profile picture and tell me you think I'm serious
Did you know countries like Russia and China have better privacy protections for their citizens (at least when it comes to protections against their corporations, not their government of course), and just buy information on US citizens from US corporations for many of their human research needs?
Look at Cambridge Analyticas involvement in swinging the 2016 US election if you want an example of how much damage information can do when used in psyops
I always found the C6ISR acronym in warfare to be interesting. R is reconnaissance, S is surveillance, I is intelligence, and the 6 C's are Command and Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, and finally Combat
You can predict when conflicts are about to rise with social media information. Frustration can be measured by looking at social circles. Consider Romeo and Juliet, they like each other, but everyone around them hates everyone else in the opposing party. Because Romeo and Juliet interact with each other positively, that means groups that don't like each other are going to interact and human nature wants to resolve this frustration. This type of graph theory is used in the middle east to predict conflicts.
Do you remember the protest where BLM protesters were ran over by a truck? Russia organized the protest for both left and right wing parties. They got intelligence through surveillance. They got surveillance by just buying your info from American corps.