Taylor Lorenz’s Power User How The Government Tracks Your Life
6 snips
Jan 23, 2026 The podcast dives into the alarming world of surveillance capitalism, revealing how your online activities fuel data harvesting for government use. It discusses plans for a centralized portal where agencies can buy sensitive data like location and social media content. Concerns about AI-driven analysis, including the risks of biased algorithms and pre-crime policing, are highlighted. The need for privacy laws to safeguard free speech is emphasized, warning that unchecked surveillance poses a significant threat to individual freedoms.
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Government 'One-Stop' Data Portal
- The U.S. government is building a centralized portal to buy vast commercial personal data on Americans.
- This 'one-stop shop' would let spy agencies access sensitive location, social, and biometric data without warrants.
AI Analysis Amplifies Privacy Risks
- The portal plans to let agencies run purchased data through AI tools like large language models and sentiment analysis.
- Taylor warns these tools are error-prone, pseudoscientific, and can produce fabricated or biased inferences about people.
High-Sensitivity Commercial Data Targeted
- The government seeks high-sensitivity commercial records including location pings, real estate, biometrics, and social media content.
- Documents show agencies already buy overlapping datasets and want centralized access to avoid duplicate purchases.
