*Data Brokers Are a Threat to Democracy** * /Unless the federal government steps up, the unchecked middlemen of surveillance capitalism will continue to harm our civil rights and national security.// / Justin Sherman You’ve probably never heard of Acxiom, but it likely knows you: The Arkansas firm claims to have data on 2.5 billion people around the world. And in the US, if someone’s interested in that information, there are virtually no restrictions on their ability to buy and then use it. Enter the data brokerage industry, the multibillion dollar economy of selling consumers’ and citizens’ intimate details. Much of the privacy discourse has rightly pointed fingers at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok, which collect users’ information directly. But a far broader ecosystem of buying up, licensing, selling, and sharing data exists around those platforms. Data brokerage firms are middlemen of surveillance capitalism—purchasing, aggregating, and repackaging data from a variety of other companies, all with the aim of selling or further distributing it. Data brokerage is a threat to democracy. [...] continua qui: https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-data-brokers-are-a-threat-to-democracy/