[roncesvalles]

>A web site logs traffic in a sort of defacto way, but no one actually reviews the traffic, and it's not sent to 3rd parties.

If data exists, it can be subpoenaed by the government.

Personally, I don't understand people's mindless anathema about being profiled by ad companies, as if the worst thing ever in the world is... being served more relevant ads? In fact I love targeted ads, I often get recommended useful things that genuinely improve my life and save me hours in shopping research.

It's the government getting that data that's the problem. Because one day you might do something that pisses off someone in the government, and someone goes on a power trip and decides to ruin your life by misusing the absolute power of the state.

[hdgvhicv]

If a correlation has the data it will sell it to anyone, including the government

If a government has the data there’s a chance it will stay in the government at least

You either

1) don’t want it stored

2) are happy for government to have it but not companies

3) are happy for everyone to have it

[ahartmetz]

The private sector - banks, insurances, your e-mail provider, cloud storage provider... - can mess with you pretty well, too.

[subscribed]

Adtech sells that to creeps, goverments, police, insurance, banks, creeps, criminals, lawyers, data brokers. There absolutely IS a case for defending vehemently against the ads and tracking.

And that's even before malvertising comes into picture.

[everdrive]

The government would need to know what to subpoena, and what to prioritize as well. In principle could the government subpoena my ISP, learn I'd used a VPN, subpoena the VPN, learned I visited Wikipedia, then subpoena Wikipedia to finally learn what articles I'd written. Yes, but in practice this will never happen. There's no interest in doing so, and it's unclear a judge would be convinced that useful information could be obtained from such a path.

On the other hand, if I'm making death threats on Facebook, there's a much more realistic path: view the threats from a public source --> subpoena Facebook for private data.

Treating the two risks as similar is madness.

[subscribed]

I wouldn't be so optimistic

- https://sls.eff.org/technologies/real-time-location-tracking - https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-spy-agenc... - https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/clos...

They don't need to subpoena anyone if they can just get it without the hassle.