I'm sure and I'm also sure something that is fine today 5 years down the line will change and cost you your job as the world gets more PC and retarded, OMG I typed retarded that's me screwed!! I have a lot of secrets, mainly married woman, when Sharia law gets in I'm stoned literally, but I keep all my info secret, nothing links to me anyway, FB doesn't have real info, name date of birth / anything. Worry about and work the problem when it happens, not enough time to worry and be paranoid about everything.
Electronic traces links who you are, ML know you better than yourself, AI can survey more than there are people on this planet, data brokers swaying swing states, East starting scoring us.. Thread starter is correct, but source is unenlightened human.
I had a close family member on a public forum for graphic artists (using an alias) say one of those "yo momma so fat" lines to a guy, obviously jokingly. The guy was a completely loony as in mentally ill, tracked him down to the office, asking people why he's offending his mother, the jokes don't translate well from from English and the people in the office were confused. This was a decade ago or so. After that, I don't post any details as much as possible, there are seriously ill people out there. Also, Facebook can go to hell.
Yet we have people who think it cannot be done, we don't have the capability. It's being done and has been for a decade or so now. It will only intensify as the tools improve.
Did you hear about all the little bitty camera satellites recently put into orbit. Every inch of the Earth's land mass (I don't recall if the seas are also included) is now under 24/7 surveillance. Data is, of course, also being fed to US intelligence. Vastly more data than they have personnel to analyze. They are currently working on greatly improving AI; to do the grunt work. But basically, all this data is being archived, so if need be; they can simply 'go back in time' to see 'what happened.'
Sure, they will use it for the "bad guys" like terrorists and such. But they will also use it on people like Assange and others. Sure, if you're a nobody who just goes with the flow and accepts everything, the risk is low but even then - what if you have something as meaningless as a tax dispute and they realize it's actually very cheap to track you down. Suddenly the "hey, I'm not doing bad things" argument goes out the window.
I agree. As I recall, crippled access (still pictures, so many times per day, for example) is available to the public/big-business ... for a fee. (For example, hedge funds could look at the parking lots of every Walmart at key times during the day, everyday; to generate unique data for their algorithms...more frequently than say ... Google Earth images. That's just one legitimate use for the public.) The government gets the real-time video feed. Clouds may be a problem though. I believe the intelligence community may assist traditional law enforcement anonymously (tip lines, etc.) on high profile cases. This way, they avoid becoming 'part of the case,' and avoid having to fight in court to protect their 'methods and sources.' But sometimes, those 'methods and sources' become public knowledge. Spy vs. Spy, El Chapo Edition https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/11/spy-vs-spy-el-chapo-edition-guzman-narco-flexispy-hacking/