Does privacy still exist?

[DoggyDaddy]

Privacy is "dead", only because we have willingly led it to the gas chamber. The .gov is only part of that. They are too incompetent to make good use of the data (currently). I mean, hell, folks called the FBI about the kid in Parkland, called the local sheriff, and called the school, but they all sat on their hands. The .gov may have a mass of data, but bureaucracy prevents them from doing anything remotely effective with it. Sure, certain agencies can mine it looking for a specific person (a background check), but mining it for "patterns" and finding Joe-Schmoe in Podunk, Indiana is still not terribly likely. Not that they aren't trying...

Private parties are a different story. The credit industry, internet providers, and social media providers probably understand your behaviors better than your spouse does. They are motivated to collect and USE that data, and they do... well. Facebook as made billions buying and selling user data. Even if you don't have an account, they know who you are (in a technical sense).

[video=youtube;Zw8LDMOiOko]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw8LDMOiOko[/video]

 

[BugI02]

They already store the data; all it takes is a tireless, massively parallel automaton to winnow it and detect patterns. Care to speculate who is most likely to fund/deploy cutting edge AI systems (assuming they haven't already)?