#Privacy#Surveillance#GeoLocation#DataBrokers#DataBrokerage#Bazze: "A San Francisco-based data broker claiming to have defense agency partnerships in the United States and United Kingdom is advertising access to “real-time” location data and a suite of other information, which Western governments can use to track foreign individuals in sensitive locations overseas. Called Bazze, the company markets a platform that can enable searches for people in embassies, consulates, and military bases, underscoring governments’ growing reliance on data brokers to access vast quantities of intelligence on global citizens from commercial sources.
Bazze is part of an often opaque data broker network that mines information from digital ad firms, cellular providers and public records databases for marketing insights and behavior trends. It claims to offer an easy way to ask targeted questions of disparate data sets that would otherwise need to be analyzed individually. In an interview with Forbes, Bazze founder Samuel Semwangu described the company as a marketplace for data. He was quick to note that it facilitates access only — not analysis. For that, “customers must use other tools and analysis they conduct on their own,” he told Forbes."
#EU#DataProtection#Privacy#DataBrokers#DataBrokerage: "A cross-party coalition of Members of the European Parliament demanded that the European Commission take action following the revelations that sensitive data from European leaders was being sold to the highest bidder.
The initiative came after two reports by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties published on Tuesday (14 November) that revealed a trade in real-time bidding data on EU and US leaders and military personnel sent by Google and other firms to China and Russia.
“The security of our EU institutions is at stake, and we demand swift action to assess the extent of this threat and including potential legislative measures to protect the privacy and security of European citizens in the ever-evolving landscape of digital threats”, MEP Paul Tang told Euractiv.
Real-time bidding (RTB) is the instantaneous selling and buying of data. This technology broadcasts sensitive information about people while they use the internet, for example, the device they are using or their location."
3 tax preparation firms sent extraordinarily sensitive information (income, taxes, exemptions) on tens of millions of taxpayers to Facebook/Meta for 2 yrs
data used by Meta to create targeted advertising to its users, other companies, & to train Meta’s algorithms