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But they are though? I agree that intrinsic privacy rights should prevent this. But the fact is this data is freely available, it's public information, the individual has released it appropriately. The problem isn't the govt using public data, the problem is that the data is public. You simply cannot have a privacy concern when you've agreed for it to not be private in the first place.


It's not freely available, it's for sale. And just because private data is for sale does make it public.


It's private property that happens to be data. The fact it's allowed to be collected and sold to anyone much less the government.


Which means that private consent in contract for data collection here is meaningless.

Similar to how one cannot sign away one’s constitutional rights in a contract.




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