Most data brokers should be behind bars
It’s all very well to say that what is not explicitly forbidden — de jure — is, de facto, allowed, but there are companies, so-called data brokers, out there whose very existence is a stain on society, and whose CEOs and management should be locked up in jail.
A researcher at Duke University recently tried to acquire mental health data, and found that not only was it surprisingly easy and available to anyone, but that there were as many as eleven companies willing to provide it. Yes, you read that correctly: mental health data on specific individuals based on diagnosed conditions such as depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder, and cross-referenced with sociodemographic information.
The availability of such information speaks volumes about the dysfunctional society we have created: an environment in which everything, absolutely everything that can be exploited to make money for some unspeakable individual is for sale, and is in fact marketed so that other unspeakable people can try to make money by advertising the victims of this information theft and gross invasion of privacy. It is simply mind-boggling, and if it is not prohibited, which it seems that in the United States it is not — something unthinkable from a European perspective — it should be the immediate subject of a presidential order that would not only prohibit it, but would automatically…
