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The former will just blackmail you.


The bar for China successfully leveraging some damaging information on a US citizen in the US is pretty high. Meaning they have to have something very damning against a person in a position of interest. Not impossible but narrow.

The bar for leveraging general information about a regular US citizen in the US by a company like Amazon or the US government is very, very low. One thing I see happening really soon (if not already) is such data being used by medical insurers to algorithmically decide your coverage and rates. Or for authorities to use to establish whatever pattern they want that can be damning even if circumstantial.

Looking around, all of this already happens in the US even without the help of an extra massive data collection net. From companies like Google or PayPal algorithmically locking you out of your critical digital identity, your paid services, your money with simply a boilerplate "sorry not sorry, don't let the door hit you on your way out", to authorities stealing all your neighbors' smart doorbell recordings to see what you have been doing and Stingraying the hell out of everyone on the off chance that they're going to catch the person they're looking for. Anything that makes that easier or opens up more avenues to do more of that is definitely going to be used (and abused) as such.




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