The FTC takes aim at commercial surveillance

Oh, the sheer poetry of “Commercial Surveillance and Data Security Rulemaking.”

9 min readAug 12, 2022

A floating room whose fall and floor are composed of Matrix-style ‘code waterfalls.’ On the back wall are the logos of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Airbnb, Tesla and Uber, each superimposed over the glowing red eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Standing in the foreground is a character created by merging an old trustbuster cartoon of Roosevelt wielding his ‘big stick’ with a picture of FCC chair Lina Khan’s head. Her head is set amid a ‘supernova’ eff

The biggest fallacy in the online privacy is that there is a difference between “state surveillance” and “commercial surveillance.” Bizarrely, it’s a fallacy that is widely held by both government snoops and Big Tech snoops.

The FTC takes aim at commercial surveillance

Oh, the sheer poetry of “Commercial Surveillance and Data Security Rulemaking.”

Written by Cory Doctorow