Define letting? The political system has de-criminalized vote buying by re-branding the bribers as 'lobbyists' and protecting it as a 1st Amendment right. Even Guilfoyle's controversy was asking for 100k to her Amex account from a "lobbyist". In most countries it's a jailable offense.

This lobbying means that the politicians might be elected by "us" but they work for "them" - the "lobbyists."

Does this answer your question sufficiently?

Don't you get it?! What if a restaurant had a QR code and I had to ask the waiter what to eat? Or what if I had to pay more for a TV? Or WORSE -- not watch TV? I have to be comfortable and and everything must be convenient ALL THE TIME. I love the 4th amendment, but the MOMENT I suffer even the most minor inconvenience I MUST throw the 4th amendment out the window. Don't you see I have no choice?

Because "private good public bad" brainwashing has been so effective that most Americans see this structure as a good thing, even though the consequences are very obvious and very bad.

How are we gonna get them to do that? We have a choice between two parties each propped up by trillions of dollars in donations that are both cool with selling our data.

We keep voting for people promising they won’t do things like this, who then proceed to do things like this.

Because then daddy can make the scary people go away.

The court rulings are based on telephone directories and the conflicts between their disparate companies (including Ma Bell). The phone company tried to claim that they owned the phone numbers (and any derivative intellectual property rights). The companies that published competing phone books successfully argued that the only property rights exist in the compilation of data - not in the data itself. The result of this pile of history is that whosoever owns the computer owns the data on that computer.

The GDPR comes from the opposite direction - you own the data about yourself.

There's no "selling" of data. These are just connection logs kept as part of routine auditing/anti-spam/anti-abuse practice by the ISP (something we all agree here is a good thing). And ICE appears to have gotten a warrant for them, which showed them the personal IPs of their targets.

You can argue the warrant was poorly justified (and I'd agree!), but I don't see a plausible world where "ISPs aren't allowed to do connection analysis on their own networks" is going to help anyone. Well, anyone except spammers. They'd love that.

America is a backwards country where unless something is explicitly illegal, apparently it's totally okay to engage in said thing.

I keep pushing the big "make it illegal to sell US citizens' data and arrest anyone who breaks that law" button on my wall here but nothing happens

> America is crazy, why are you letting people sell your data like this?

Because of FUD spread about data protection laws… such as the GDPR?