Did you think the market was like this?

https://pogowasright.org/the-data-broker-directory-who-has-your-data-where-they-got-it-and-who-they-sell-it-to/

The Data Broker Directory: Who has your data, where they got it, and who they sell it to

As seen on Codamail (formerly known as Cotse.net), an email privacy service by Packetderm.

The Scale of the Problem

The EFF and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse have identified over 750 unique data broker groups operating across U.S. state registries alone. The California Data Broker Registry lists over 500 registered companies. The global data broker market was valued at approximately $294 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach over $448 billion by 2031.

These companies collect, aggregate, analyze, and sell information about you, often without your knowledge or meaningful consent. They know where you live, where you’ve been, what you buy, what medications you take, how you drive, who your relatives are, how much you earn, and whether you’ve ever been evicted, arrested, or filed for bankruptcy.

This directory is the result of extensive research drawing from state data broker registries (California, Vermont, Texas, Oregon), the EFF/Privacy Rights Clearinghouse unified database, DataBrokersWatch.org, the Big-Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List (BADBOOL), Optery, DeleteMe, IntelTechniques, investigative journalism, enforcement records, and corporate filings. We have identified over 1,700 unique named entities operating in the data broker ecosystem.

For each major company, we’ve documented what data they collect, where they get it, who they sell it to, any enforcement actions or scandals, and available opt-out procedures. The directory is organized into the following categories:

Directory Categories

1. Consumer Data Giants

The largest and most powerful data brokers in the world, including Acxiom/LiveRamp, Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, LexisNexis, Data Axle, Epsilon, Nielsen, Thomson Reuters, and Oracle Data Cloud. These companies maintain profiles on hundreds of millions of consumers and serve as the backbone of the entire data broker ecosystem.

2. People Search & Background Check Sites

Over 100 consumer-facing sites that let anyone look up your name, address, phone number, relatives, and more. Includes ownership maps of the major corporate networks, the data supply chain explaining where they get your information, and FTC enforcement actions against the industry.

3. Location & Geolocation Data

Companies that track your physical movements through your phone. Covers SDK-based location harvesting, geofencing, government purchases of commercial location data, and the FTC enforcement actions and outright bans that followed.

4. Surveillance & Government Contractors

Companies that sell data and surveillance technology to government agencies, often enabling warrantless tracking. Covers domestic surveillance contractors, social media intelligence brokers, license plate recognition networks, and the international spyware industry.

5. Financial Data Brokers

Companies that aggregate and sell your banking, transaction, and credit data beyond the Big Three credit bureaus. Covers open-banking data aggregators, specialty consumer reporting agencies, and business credit data providers.

6. Health & Pharmaceutical Data

Companies that buy, sell, and broker your medical information. Covers clinical data aggregators, pharmaceutical analytics, health IT platforms, the mental health data market, and DOJ and FTC enforcement actions against the industry.

7. Vehicle & Driving Data

Your car is watching you. Covers telematics and driving behavior data, connected car data brokers, license plate recognition networks, and state attorney general enforcement actions against automakers and insurers.

8. Employment & Tenant Screening

Companies that decide whether you get a job or an apartment. Covers employment background check providers, income and employment verification databases, tenant screening algorithms, the DOJ’s landmark algorithmic rent-fixing case, and the evolving regulatory landscape.

9. Advertising, Marketing & Identity Data

The ad-tech ecosystem that tracks you across the web. Covers data management platforms, identity graph providers, B2B data brokers, and the real-time bidding marketplace that broadcasts your data billions of times per day.

10. Insurance Data Brokers

Companies that determine your insurance rates and coverage. Covers claims databases, medical underwriting repositories, property and geospatial intelligence, telematics and driving behavior scoring, and the growing use of AI in insurance pricing.

11. Political Data & Voter Analytics

Companies that profile you for political campaigns. Covers voter file aggregators, political data vendors across both parties, predictive modeling firms, major data breaches, and the legacy of Cambridge Analytica.

12. Telecom & Communications Data

How your phone carrier sells your data. Covers the carrier location data scandal, FCC enforcement actions, location aggregators, prison telecom surveillance, and the ongoing constitutional challenges.

13. Education & Student Data

Companies that profit from children’s data. Covers student information systems, standardized testing data sales, ed-tech surveillance tools, school monitoring software, student marketing pipelines, and FERPA’s enforcement gaps.

14. Social Media Aggregators & Web Scrapers

Companies that vacuum up your public posts and profiles. Covers social listening platforms, OSINT tools sold to government agencies, web scraping infrastructure, and the legal battles over public data collection.

15. Retail & Loyalty Program Data

Your shopping habits are for sale. Covers loyalty card analytics companies, receipt-scanning apps, transaction data platforms, and the rise of retail media networks where retailers monetize purchase data through targeted advertising.

16. Real Estate & Property Data

Companies that know every property you’ve owned, every mortgage, every tax assessment. Covers property data aggregators, MLS data providers, real estate analytics platforms, and the consolidation of the industry through major acquisitions.

17. International Data Brokers

Data brokers operating outside the United States, covering 30+ countries. Includes credit bureaus, surveillance firms, and data aggregators across the UK, EU, India, China, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and more. Also covers the global regulatory landscape.

Read more on Codamail to find out how to fight back and to find helpful resources.  As Stephen K. Gielda of Packetderm commented to me,  “Of particular interest is the telecom section, showing every big Cell carrier selling your location every 15 sec and the Surveillance & Government Contractors section, illustrating how the US government circumvents the 4th amendment. It is a living document and quite a large collection, so can’t be copied to your site, but thought you might be personally interested.”

PogoWasRight is more than personally interested. This is a great resource for our readers, so pick a section of interest to you and go check it out!

The Codamail directory is updated regularly as new information becomes available. Last updated: February 2026.

Apparently the proper strategy has yet to shake out.

https://www.bespacific.com/ai-is-just-starting-to-change-the-legal-profession/

AI is just starting to change the legal profession

Understanding AI – “How much are lawyers using AI? Official reports vary widely: a Thomson Reuters report found that only 28% of law firms are actively using AI, while Clio’s Legal Trends 2025 reported that 79% of legal professionals use AI in their firms. To learn more, I spoke with 10 lawyers, ranging from junior associates to senior partners at seven of the top 20 Vault law firms. Many told me that firms were adopting AI cautiously and that the industry was still in its early days of AI. The lawyers I interviewed weren’t AI skeptics. They’d tested AI tools, could identify tasks where the technology worked, and often had sharp observations about why their co-workers were slow to adopt. But when I asked about their own habits, a more complicated picture emerged. Even lawyers who understood AI’s value seemed to be leaving gains on the table, sometimes for reasons they’d readily critique in colleagues. One junior associate described the situation well: “The head of my firm said we want to be a fast follower on AI because we can’t afford to be reckless. But I think equating AI adoption with recklessness is a huge mistake. Elite firms cannot afford to view themselves as followers in anything core to their business.”

Obvious? Only if you look.

https://pogowasright.org/trumps-tiktok-deal-is-less-about-security-and-more-about-consolidating-power/

Trump’s TikTok Deal Is Less About Security, and More About Consolidating Power

Lilian Coral writes:

Following intense government pressure, TikTok has finalized its deal to sell its U.S. operations to an investor group including Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. And after a year of deliberate federal efforts to roll back institutional accountability, weaken regulatory enforcement, and evade the rule of law, the sale of TikTok becomes even more consequential. It is not simply a resolution to a long-running policy debate. It is a signal about how power is being reorganized in the digital public sphere and about how easily democratic principles can be traded away under the guise of pragmatism.

[…]

But public trust in the new TikTok is questionable at best. Particularly, as the platform’s new terms and conditions show, TikTok is expanding data collection of its users through:

1. Precise location: Until this update, the app did not collect the precise, GPS-derived location data of U.S. users.

2. AI interactions: Now, users’ interactions with any of TikTok’s AI tools explicitly fall under data that the service may collect and store. This includes prompts and the AI-generated outputs.

3. Expanded ads network: Rather than just using your collected data to target you while using the app, your info is used to serve more relevant ads wherever you go online, including other platforms.

Read more at New America.

PogoWasRight is not a user of TikTok. If you are, please read about the deal at the above source and other sources and then share your opinion: do you think this is a good/smart deal for users or not?  Will you continue using TikTok?

An interesting source for all types of intelligence gathering…

https://www.timesofisrael.com/two-indicted-for-using-classified-info-to-place-online-bets-on-military-operations/

Two indicted for using classified info to place online bets on military operations

An Israeli military reservist and a civilian were indicted this week for using classified information to place bets regarding military operations on the popular Polymarket prediction market, authorities announced on Thursday.

Not so innovative?

https://pogowasright.org/maine-house-passes-strong-privacy-bill/

Maine House Passes Strong Privacy Bill

EPIC writes:

A strong comprehensive privacy bill passed the Maine House of Representatives today. The bill, LD 1822, closely mirrors the privacy law Maryland passed in 2024 and would extend essential privacy protections to Mainers.

The bill includes strong data minimization requirements, enhanced protections for sensitive data, and civil rights protections prohibiting data-driven discrimination.

EPIC has testified in support of LD 1822, explaining how most existing state privacy laws fall short and the ways in which this bill protects Mainers’ privacy and encourages privacy-protective business practices.

EPIC strongly supports LD 1822 and urges the Senate to pass this important legislation.

Something we should read?

https://pogowasright.org/anthology-conceptions-of-data-protection-and-privacy-legal-and-philosophical-perspectives/

Anthology: Conceptions of Data Protection and Privacy Legal and Philosophical Perspectives

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law recently posted the following announcement on LinkedIn:

We are thrilled to announce the publication of the open access anthology “Conceptions of Data Protection and Privacy Legal and Philosophical Perspectives”, edited by Elisa Orrù and Ralf Poscher and published by Hart Publishing.

The volume is based on a conference held in July 2024 at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg, which brought together data protection experts and privacy theory scholars from the USA and Europe.

The book offers a clear and concise overview of leading conceptions of data protection and privacy, exploring their social value through theoretical frameworks and European and US-American legal perspectives. It links philosophical and legal viewpoints on privacy to historical and contemporary rights struggles. It also addresses privacy challenges posed by the digital revolution, including advances in AI, and recent efforts to safeguard privacy.

Aimed at scholars, researchers, and students in law and philosophy, the book covers key theoretical and legal positions on privacy and data protection. Legal practitioners will find insights into landmark decisions of the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, and the US Supreme Court.  Additionally, it is invaluable for anyone seeking to understand the legal and philosophical foundations of globally influential regulations like the GDPR and the AI Act.

Open Access Download: https://lnkd.in/gXvPAqGd

If it’s not double think, it’s at least Trump think.

https://www.propublica.org/article/institute-of-museum-and-library-services-grant-guidelines-donald-trump

Grant Guidelines for Libraries and Museums Take “Chilling” Political Turn Under Trump

… The Institute of Museum and Library Services is now accepting applications for its 2026 grant cycle. But this time, it has unusually specific criteria.

In cover letters accompanying the applications, the institute said it “particularly welcomes” projects that align with President Donald Trump’s vision for America.

These would include those that foster an appreciation for the country “through uplifting and positive narratives,” the agency writes, citing an executive order that attacks the Smithsonian Institution for its “divisive, race-centered ideology.” (Trump has said the museum focused too much on “how bad slavery was.”) The agency also points to an executive order calling for the end of “the anti-Christian weaponization of government” and one titled Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again.

The solicitation marks a stark departure for the agency, whose guidelines were previously apolitical and focused on merit.

Beyond the tipping point is the slippery slope of willful ignorance.

https://www.bespacific.com/chaos-in-minneapolis-exposes-an-internet-at-war-with-truth/

Chaos in Minneapolis Exposes an Internet at War With Truth

The New York Times, Gift Article  – “…Experts fear that Americans are losing their ability to distinguish between fact and fiction — and that fewer people seem to care about the difference. The online churn that now accompanies any major news event obscures the common reference points that once helped guide the country forward. With technology, impudence and apathy all colliding at once, the shock to American attitudes toward reality — and the public consensus required by the democratic experiment — may be a permanent one, experts said. “In moments past, we thought that this online fever would break, and now it is a systemic feature rather than a bug,” said Graham Brookie, the senior director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab, which studies online communities. “This is just how it is right now — we’re all collectively navigating that for the worse.” Although these volatile forces have been amassing for years, the collective threat they posed remained largely theoretical. Even compared with the informational chaos of 2020, which included Covid-19 conspiracy theories and baseless claims of election fraud, facts and truth now face a far more hostile environment. Disinformation watchdogs are under increasing  political pressure  from Republicans, and researchers have lost funding.

The audience for fact checks  is far outstripped by interest in false and misleading posts. Initiatives at social media platforms such as X and Facebook to limit or remove such content have been slashed or abandoned, leaving the digital sewage to flow directly to users. Social media is flooded with so much dubious content, such as The result: an “authenticity collapse,” said Alon Yamin, the chief executive of Copyleaks, which offers tools to detect the presence of A.I. in content. “The internet is lying by default, and the media ecosystem is just flooded with content that you know looks real, sounds real but is definitely not real,” he said. “There is a danger here of almost losing touch with reality.”…

(Related)

https://www.bespacific.com/nearly-half-of-americans-believed-top-false-claims-in-2025/

Nearly Half of Americans Believed Top False Claims in 2025

NewsGuard: “Over the first seven months of Reality Gap Index reports — from June to December 2025 — NewsGuard found that an average of nearly half of Americans believed at least one false claim about major claims spreading in the news. For the first six months after the launch of the NewsGuard Reality Gap Index in June, the average percent of Americans who believed false claims was 50 percent. A dip in December reduced the average to 46 percent for the seven months of 2025. The monthly variations, of course, may have less to do with changes in Americans’ gullibility than with changes in the velocity, spread, and overall appeal of a particular false claim. For example, in July and August, when the Reality Gap Index reached a high of 64 percent, two particularly viral false claims dominated the news: that U.S. President Donald Trump declared martial law to address the crime problem in Washington D.C., and that Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ immigrant detention center was surrounded by an alligator-infested moat.

• NewsGuard’s Reality Gap Index is the nation’s first ongoing measurement of Americans’ propensity to believe at least one of the top three false claims circulating online each month, sourced from NewsGuard’s False Claims Fingerprints data stream. Through a monthly survey of a representative sample of Americans conducted by YouGov, the Reality Gap Index measures the percentage of Americans who believe one or more of the month’s top three false claims…”

Some concepts worthy of adoption?

https://ijitc.com/index.php/my/article/view/97

AI SURVEILLANCE, PRIVACY (ḤIFẒ AL-ʿIRḌ), AND HUMAN DIGNITY IN ISLAMIC JURISPRUDENCE

The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) surveillance technologies presents unprecedented challenges to privacy and human dignity, necessitating examination through the lens of Islamic jurisprudence. This study explores the intersection of AI-enabled surveillance systems with the Islamic principle of Ḥifẓ al-ʿIrḍ (protection of honor and privacy), which constitutes a fundamental objective (maqṣid) of Shariah. Through a comprehensive analysis of classical Islamic legal texts, contemporary fatwas, and current AI surveillance practices, this research investigates how Islamic ethical frameworks can address modern surveillance challenges while preserving human dignity (karāmah al-insān). The study employs a qualitative methodology integrating classical Islamic legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) with contemporary technology ethics literature. Findings reveal that while Islam permits certain forms of surveillance for legitimate purposes (maṣlaḥah), AI surveillance systems often violate fundamental Islamic principles of privacy, consent, and human dignity through mass data collection, algorithmic bias, and unwarranted intrusion into private spaces. The research concludes that Islamic jurisprudence offers robust ethical guidelines for regulating AI surveillance, emphasizing the inviolability of private life, the requirement of legitimate necessity, proportionality in monitoring, and accountability mechanisms. This study contributes to the emerging discourse on Islamic digital ethics and provides practical recommendations for developing Shariah-compliant AI surveillance governance frameworks.

Will AI have my interests at heart?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6173424

The Privacy Veil

Privacy law rests on a failed premise. The notice-and-consent paradigm assumes users will read privacy policies, understand them, and make informed choices. They cannot. Reading the policies an average American encounters would require thirty working days per year. Nearly half of American adults lack the literacy to comprehend them. Even informed users cannot negotiate take-it-or-leave-it terms with entities holding asymmetric power. The problem is structural, not remediable through clearer disclosures or stronger enforcement.

This Article proposes the Autonomous Virtual Identity Agent, a legally recognized AI intermediary that acts on users' behalf in the digital environment. The AVIA reads privacy policies, negotiates terms, monitors compliance, and exercises user rights at a scale no individual could achieve. Drawing on the jurisprudence of legal fictions, the Article develops a complete legal architecture including registration requirements, fiduciary duties, and veil-piercing standards, offering a model statute for legislative adoption.

Interesting approach. (Roman law?)

https://feqh.semnan.ac.ir/article_10456_en.html

Explanation of the smart slave theory in artificial intelligence contracts

Many jurists have defined the relationship between artificial intelligence and principal in the form of the theory of smart tools. Due to the tremendous progress of artificial intelligence, some objections have been noticed in this theory and it has led to the emergence of other hypotheses, one of which is the theory of intelligent slave. Based on this hypothesis, considering the similarities of "permissive slave in business" with "learning artificial intelligence system", the nature of artificial intelligence contracts can be considered the same as permissive slave contracts in jurisprudence and law and this is while the pillars of the validity of the contract; It means that there is capacity, intention and consent in these contracts. In this article, after explaining the technology of artificial intelligence contracts and explaining the nature of slave contracts with permission, the intelligent slave theory has been analyzed and investigated with a descriptive-analytical method, and as a result, this theory has been preferred over the popular theory of smart tools.

The AI lawyer?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6164388

The Dead Law Theory: The Perils of Simulated Interpretation

Judges now consult ChatGPT about what statutes mean. The scholarly response treats this as a reliability problem. Reliability is beside the point. LLMs generate text by predicting probable token sequences, manipulating symbols without accessing what those symbols mean. But syntax cannot generate semantics. Computational legal interpretation does not fail because the technology is immature. It fails because it is a category error. A theory that fixes meaning in historical usage and treats interpretation as empirical recovery cannot resist algorithms that measure historical usage patterns. The progression from dictionaries to corpus databases to generative models follows originalism's empirical commitments to their logical end. AI-generated content saturates the corpora on which future models train, and the resulting degradation eliminates marginal claims first; those upon which life and liberty depend. Computational methods did not contaminate originalist interpretation. Originalism was already a jurisprudence that simulated meaning while discarding the semantic content that interpretation requires. The machines simply made the method hyperreal.

Perhaps we could start a “wiki-factbook” site?

https://www.bespacific.com/cia-ends-publication-of-its-popular-world-factbook-reference-tool/

CIA ends publication of its popular World Factbook reference tool

AP: Close the cover on the CIA World Factbook: “The spy agency announced Wednesday that after more than 60 years, it is shuttering the popular reference manual. The announcement  posted to the CIA’s website offered no reason for the decision to end the Factbook, but it follows a vow from Director John Ratcliffe  to end programs that don’t advance the agency’s core missions. First launched in 1962 as a printed, classified reference manual for intelligence officers, the Factbook offered a detailed, by-the-numbers picture of foreign nations, their economies, militaries, resources and societies. The Factbook proved so useful that other federal agencies began using it, and within a decade, an unclassified version was released to the public. After going online in 1997, the Factbook quickly became a popular reference site for journalists, trivia aficionados and the writers of college essays, racking up millions of visits per year. The White House has moved to cut staffing at the CIA  and the National Security Agency early in Trump’s second term, forcing the agency to do more with less.

• The entire site is rchived here:  https://web.archive.org/web/20260000000000*/https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/

• Downloading a site from Archive.org and then serving locally  using Kiwix  – “Access vital information anywhere. Use our apps for offline reading on the go or the Hotspot in every place you want to call home. Ideal for remote areas, emergencies, or independent knowledge access.”

• Simon Willison’s Blog  – Up until 2020 the CIA published annual zip file archives of the entire site. Those are available (along with the rest of the Factbook) on the Internet Archive. I downloaded the 384MB .zip file for the year 2020 and extracted it into a new GitHub repository, simonw/cia-world-factbook-2020. I’ve enabled GitHub Pages for that repository so you can browse the archived copy at simonw.github.io/cia-world-factbook-2020/.”

The technology of war is changing.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/05/europe/starlink-ukraine-russia-blocked-intl

Ukrainian Defense Ministry says Starlink terminals used by Russia in Ukraine are ‘cut off’

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Thursday that Russia’s Starlink satellite internet terminals in Ukraine have been “cut off,” disrupting Russian military communications.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said SpaceX, which owns Starlink, is working with Ukraine to update a “whitelist” of approved and verified Starlink terminals, while unapproved Russian systems have been blocked.

“The Starlink terminals added to the ‘whitelist’ are working. The Russians’ terminals have already been blocked,” Fedorov said in a statement Thursday. “We continue to verify Starlink terminals. The first batch of terminals that made it onto the ‘whitelist’ are already operational.”

Perhaps AI lawyers?

https://www.opb.org/article/2026/02/05/oregon-supreme-court-ruling-criminal-charges-dismiss-defendant-no-lawyer/

Criminal charges must be dismissed if defendant can’t get a lawyer, Oregon Supreme Court rules

Oregonians charged with crimes who cannot get timely legal representation from the state must have their cases dismissed, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that a defendant’s criminal charges must be dismissed if the state has failed to provide a defense attorney for 60 days in a misdemeanor case or 90 days in a felony case, after the defendant’s first court appearance.

The ruling could force the dismissal of more than 1,400 criminal cases statewide for those who do not have a court-appointed lawyer. More than 900 affected cases are in Multnomah County, according to data from the Oregon Judicial Department.