The Government Really Is Spying On You — And It’s Legal. Consumer data has become a lucrative commodity, and the US government is buying.

Politico - Consumer data has become a lucrative commodity, and the US government is buying.

Journalist Byron Tau found that the government was buying up reams of consumer data — information scraped from cellphones, social media profiles, internet ad exchanges and other open sources — and deploying it for often-clandestine purposes like law enforcement and national security in the U.S. and abroad. The places you go, the websites you visit, the opinions you post — all collected and legally sold …

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