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Corporations play a unique role in the surveillance system. With the emergence of the internet and ever-increasing technological growth, the line between what was private correspondence and private data and what was up for sale was blurred. This new and loosely regulated internet gave rise to an army of data brokers, digital marketers, and corporations eager to use the new abundance of data to maximize profits as much as possible. This market for bulk data on things such as spending habits, browsing history, and even physical location fed an industry that the government began to take interest in. While certain corporations have better or worse handling of ad personalization and targeting, it is very important to realize that no corporations are innocent. Apple, by all standards, is a more ethical corporation in regard to privacy and data tracking than their competitors Facebook or Google, but they have still aided the NSA in their mass surveillance efforts. Below is an acquisition graph from the Special Source Operations department of the NSA, detailing what corporations they got on their payroll for bulk data collection and when: “Analytic infrastructures allow for powerful insights into data, but they create compliance and security risks for companies because data is often dumped into data lakes without proper labeling, auditing, or policy enforcement.” —Ali Golshan, CTO and Co-Founder of StackRox |