Btw, Snowden is about illegal mass surveillance by the government (in collaboration with tech corporations). The app mentioned in the article however only connects publicly and legally available data (the consumer's fault).
- If you're a professional, someone is providing a way for your customers to audit interactions with you
- If you're a driver, someone is tracking your car's movements
- If you buy products, someone is tracking you bought them
- If you ever communicate online, someone has logged that communication
- If you're ever seen in public, someone can tag your face
... and after all this, if you piss an individual off enough, that individual can create a pastebin and drop as much of your personal info on there as they care to.
We're already past the event horizon of private (easily-gleaned) information staying private; it's time to re-organize the solution space around the assumption that the information is public.
I doubt that. No one prevents someone tagging me on Facebook even if I don't have a Facebook account. Now Facebook knows my name and the corresponding face without me ever using Facebook.
Anyone with your photo can associate it with your name on Facebook even if you don't use it.
But this is along much of the same lines, in that it shows how technology enables ways of invading your privacy that you might not have thought of.
Much of the NSA invasion of our privacy is about the capabilities they get through technology. With just a bunch of dead data, it would not nearly be as chilling as when Snowden explains how they can perform sophisticated searches through all data stored about you.