"The United States government has been secretly amassing a “large amount” of “sensitive and intimate information” on its own citizens, a group of senior advisers informed Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, more than a year ago.

The size and scope of the government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans’ lives are described soberly and at length by the director’s own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. Haines had first tasked her advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and US intelligence community members."

I thought that this was timely and relevant. Does federalization/decentralization solve these issues as we go into Web3? I’m newer to these ideas.

  • Back home it was sometimes speculated that the invasiveness of background checks was to gather dirt on the subjects to hold over them, just in case.

    As for federation/decentralization/whatever, it doesn’t solve the mass collection issues at all. We already know how and where they do it (contracting with providers of all kinds and monitoring at IXPs). Unless we get off the Net entirely, there’s no way to stop it.