The rabbit hole just got a whole lot more sinister and uglier. US companies are cheerfully complicit with the American Stasi security state, and share data with them. Gosh, what could go wrong with national security agencies trading your supposedly private data with private firms? I see no possibilities for abuse here, do you?
Let’s say Target, Lowe’s, and Starbucks are trusted partners. Then they might well be sharing your shopping with god-knows-which infernal security agencies, more than a few of which are military. (What, you thought NSA was the only one?) In return they might get all sorts of tasty info about your shopping habits. Thus, information about you the government has no logical reason to obtain, except for the purpose of imposing a security state, is scattered everywhere, including no doubt to slimebag collection agencies, political operatives, and more.
Make no mistake, quite a lot can be determined by watching shopping, as in the creepy example of Target figuring out a teenage girl was pregnant before her father did.
Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said.
These programs, whose participants are known as trusted partners, extend far beyond what was revealed by Edward Snowden
Remember how they say conspiracies are impossible because too many people know about them, and the information always eventually leaks? Well not if you contain it to a handful of people in any organization, and force them to sign a bloody NDA, pledging one’s first born in the case of secrecy breach.
An example of a company that is happy to “communicate” with the government is Intel’s McAfee internet security unit, which in addition to everything is one giant backdoor entrance for the government. If need be of course.