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Corporate-surveillance-murder.md (2793B)

    

  1. ---
  2. title: The corporate surveillance machine is killing people
  3. date: 2021-03-06
  4. outputs: [html, gemtext]
  5. ---
  7. I have never been angrier about the corporate surveillance complex, which I have
  8. rallied against for *years*, than I am today. Buying and selling user's private
  9. information on the open market is bad enough for the obvious reasons, but today,
  10. I learned that the depths of depravity this market will descend to are without
  11. limit. Today I am more angry and ashamed at this industry than I have ever been.
  12. Corporate surveillance and adtech has turned your phone into an informant
  13. against you and brought about the actual **murder** of the user.
  15. [Vice: Military Unit That Conducts Drone Strikes Bought Location Data From Ordinary Apps](https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3g97x/location-data-apps-drone-strikes-iowa-national-guard)
  17. Say you're a Muslim. You download some apps for reading the Quran and
  18. participating in Muslim-oriented social networks. These ads steal whatever
  19. personal information it can get its hands on, through any means available, and
  20. sell it to [Locate X][0], who stores every GPS location your phone has visited
  21. and tags it as being associated with a Muslim. This is used, say, to place
  22. Muslim-targeted ads on billboards in Muslim-dense areas. It's also sold to the
  23. Iowa National Guard, who uses it to conduct drone strikes. The app you installed
  24. is selling your GPS data so it can be used to *kill you*.
  26. [0]: https://trademarks.justia.com/874/53/locate-87453515.html
  28. For a long time, I have preached "respect the user". I want us, as programmers,
  29. to treat the user with the same standards of common decency and respect we'd
  30. afford to our neighbors. It seems I have to revise my sermon to "don't murder
  31. the user"! If you work at a company which surveilles its users, [you are
  32. complicit][1] in these murders. You have written software which is used to
  33. *murder people*.
  35. [1]: https://drewdevault.com/2020/05/05/We-are-complicit-in-our-employers-deeds.html
  37. This industry is in severe need of a moral health check. You, the reader of
  38. this article, need to take personal responsibility for what your code is doing.
  39. Your boss isn't going to. Do you really know what that database is being used
  40. for, or who it's being sold to, or who it *might* be sold to in the future? Most
  41. companies include their hoard of private, personal information about their users
  42. as part of their valuation. Do you have stock options, by the way?
  44. I've often heard the excuse that employees of large surveillance companies "want
  45. to feed their families, like anyone else". Well, thanks to your work, a child
  46. you've never met was orphaned, and doesn't have a family anymore. Who's going to
  47. feed them? Is there really no other way for you to support your family?
  49. Don't fucking kill your users.