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Forget Equifax ... how about the Office of Personnel Management? People may well have lost their lives as a result. We may not know for decades.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-opm-hack-far-worse-you-imagi...

Oh, and the IRS has already been breached at least once. I'm not wild about waiting for the next one. Maybe government is not the best group to be holding your personal data.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/business/breach-exposes-i...




All things being equal, the US government is simultaneously (1) the single most legitimate non-medical third party that needs to access my personal data, and (2) the single best entity to hold my data in terms of personal recourse. That's not saying much, but it is better than the open scorn and disrespect for my privacy that corporations offer.

The solution to government breaches is what it's always been: to make the breached data less valuable. Hacking the IRS would be significantly less appealing if we criminalized corporate use of SSNs as credentials.


>the single best entity to hold my data in terms of personal recourse

what type of recourse are you talking about? Voting your representatives out?


That’s the slow way, but sure. I was referring to the fact that the government does occasionally react to negative press and roll back plans, as is evidenced by this case. I’ve yet to see Equifax change its security policies based on negative press.


I'm still not clear on what personal recourse you believe you have against a government. I wouldn't consider negative press a personal recourse.


Good point, gov has less reason to sell your data


Yeah, that federal deficit surely doesn't need any help getting paid down /s

However, this isn't to say that someone doesn't get the bright idea that they could fund some sort of slush fund with this.


Personal data sold to model and modify behavior. It's even more valuable to gov agencies, which spend spend drastically more than the private sector to get it.


Doesn’t stop usps for making money from spam, or from speed traps from being primarily dedicated to revenue from out of towners.




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