Throughout the nearly month-long fracas surrounding the Edward Snowden leaks and the ensuing debate about the role and even the very existence of the NSA, there’s a massive elephant in the room, and it isn’t Glenn Greenwald’s rapidly inflating sense of self-importance. The thing that almost nobody is talking about or reacting to is the fact that private corporations possess much more of your private data than anything the NSA might have stored in its underground supervillain lair.
And if you weren’t aware of this already, you aren’t paying attention.
This isn’t to say we should ignore any abuses of power or criminal wrongdoing inside the corridors of government power. There hasn’t really been any hard evidence of illegal activity at the NSA and, as creepy as it might seem as was gawk at the sausage-making, the NSA is ultimately accountable to the American people since, as we’ve discussed many times, the government is made up of We The People and multiple layers of checks embedded into the system. We don’t enjoy anything remotely close to this kind of sway over private corporations, accountable to investors and boards of directors alone. We know this since, after all, a central mission of American liberalism is to maintain an incredulous eye on corporations, be they Goldman-Sachs, Walmart, Monsanto or Halliburton. We also kind of support a strong central government, too, unless I missed the memos.
This is why the lopsided outrage directed at the NSA and not corporate privacy violations is puzzling to me, especially among the most vocal Snowden supporters. One reason for this disconnect has to do with our collective fealty to corporations as part of a consumer society. No matter how awesomely liberal you think you are or how many #OWS hashtags you post, you’re part of it. And another reason for the disconnect has to do with a lack of understanding of exactly what the NSA does in the face of well-orchestrated link-bait and scary headlines.
But let’s pretend the minimization process doesn’t occur and the NSA grabbed the content of a few of your emails or Facebook chats, and this data included your name and IP address. Fact: this data would be considerably less intrusive than the data that’s being held, used and in some cases distributed by unaccountable corporations.
Here are eight privately owned entities who have far more information about you than the NSA. [READ MORE]