False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

Early concerns about online privacy were 
dashed in favor of loose surveillance laws.
Surveillance capitalism hasn’t gone unnoticed. 
Indeed, many intelligent people are concerned. 
What’s interesting, though, is that when we look 
back, we see that these concerns can quickly 
fade and turn into acceptance.
The key message here is: Early concerns about 
online privacy were dashed in favor of loose 
surveillance laws.
Let’s explore the issue by looking at cookies. 
Unlike the delicious baked goods, the cookies on 
our computers are nothing to feel good about. 
They track us wherever we go on the internet, 
and they were not greeted with open arms. In 
1996, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) 
began taking steps to limit how much personal 
information cookies leaked. The FTC went 
against the wishes of advertisers to propose a 
simple automated protocol that would put 
personal information in the user’s control by 
default.

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The FTC understood that self-regulation wasn’t 
ideal when it came to establishing and protecting 
online privacy. And, in 2000, they were close to 
establishing legislation that would make the 
rules of online commerce similar to those offline. 
Alas, those plans were interrupted by the events 
of September 11, 2001. 
After the attacks, the US government didn’t 
tighten privacy laws in cyberspace; rather, it 
went the other way, creating the Patriot Act and 
the Terrorist Screening Program, which 
significantly 
loosened 
regulations 
around 
surveillance. The CIA and the NSA, in particular, 
quickly ramped up efforts to monitor internet 
activity. And, naturally, they turned to Google for 
support.
In 2003, Google worked with the NSA and the 
CIA to provide the agencies with better search 
technologies. The tools that Google passed on 
allowed them to analyze mountains of metadata, 
identify behavioral patterns, and predict future 
behaviors.
As it turns out, Google’s treasure trove of 
personal data is the exact kind of information for 
which both advertisers and law enforcement 
agencies will pay top dollar. After winning 
special contracts with the NSA and the CIA in 
2003, Google continued to nurture a mutually 
beneficial relationship with the intelligence 
community. In 2010, NSA Director Mike 
McConnell wrote about the need for a 
“seamless” partnership with Google, so that data 
would continue to flow unobstructed.
This brings us back to cookies. A 2015 study 
showed that, by visiting the 100 most popular 
websites, your computer would collect over 
6,000 cookies. The study also found that 83 
percent of the cookies came from third parties – 
not the websites that were actually visited. How 
is 
this 
possible? 
Google’s 
“tracking 
infrastructure” was found to be active on 92 of 
the top 100 sites.