Data and Goliath: Bruce Schneier on the Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World

[midnight]

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/13/data_and_goliath_bruce_schneier_on

"BRUCE SCHNEIER: Well, this is what we see. Companies are using surveillance for persuasion, for advertising. And it’s sliced very finely personally. The ads you see aren’t going to be the ads someone else sees, based on your interests, but also based on what the companies believe is your income level, how good a customer you are. You’re going to see different search results than somebody else. So, depending on your political persuasion, you’ll see different advertisements. You’ll see different offers. So you might get a different credit card offer than someone else. And that might be based on your income, on proxies for your minority status. We see a lot of this very personalized advertising designed to influence you and you alone.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how do you respond to those, especially in government, who say that this surveillance is needed to be able to combat modern crimes, terrorism? For instance, all of Lower Manhattan right now is—basically, there are surveillance cameras that capture every single license plate coming into Lower Manhattan for the New York Police Department.

BRUCE SCHNEIER: There are license plate scanners all over the country. It’s surprising how much of that is captured, not just in New York. But there are companies collecting license plates, looking for cars for repossession, sharing it with the government, with Homeland Security. You know, we hear a lot about this is necessary for security. All the evidence shows it’s not. I mean, there isn’t a huge crime wave of unsolved crimes because of no surveillance. And there aren’t a lot of crimes being solved by this surveillance. Crimes are solved by following the leads. That’s how terrorism plots are foiled. Whenever we ask the government, ask the police or the NSA to show how this surveillance is necessary, they can never come up with good examples. Occasionally they come up with examples that don’t pass scrutiny. But this really does seem to be we’re collecting it because we can, not because we need to."