The smartphones can very easily track us and who we talk to.
And the internet... the ISPs keep a log of all traffic.
I know.
What is the difference? Not that the information is being compiled as you have noted, and has been for decades.
What is different is that we have become complacent and have accepted that our data can be used however the powers that be chose without our say.
It is this complacency that has allowed it to happen.
You are as complacent as they come... you have drunk the koolaid, my friend.
Instead of accepting is as fact, you need to ask... can you trust the powers that be with this information? It may be too late. I, for one, will not make it easy for them to track my activities. They'll have people like you who accept it as a done deal and make it easy for them.
We might as well become complacent. There is NOTHING you can about it.
Actually what allowed it to happen was computers. And nobody realizing what being able to do math fast means. Frankly a lot of the data that they use goes back a long way. Credit cards go back to the 40s. But with hand processed data there was no useful way to track person X’s buying history and what that meant, much less compare it to 1 million OTHER Xs and find an overall pattern.
We’ve been generating some of this data for over 100 years. The Sears Catalog was generating this data. But again, no computers to leverage it.
Doesn’t matter what I trust. This is the reality we live in. Has been for a long time. Rail against the wind all you want, wind don’t care.