When a for-profit company ("commercial") gathers large, detailed dossiers of millions of people ("surveillance").
For example, if you use Twitter, go to https://twitter.com/settings/your_twitter_data and look at the stuff under "Interests and ads data". That's the tip of the iceberg.
> What are "risks associated with mass surveillance"?
Like the article says, when a company has access to detailed personal information about lots and lots of people, many bad things can happen:
* That information can be stolen by hackers and then used for identity theft or social engineering to gain access to private accounts. Think about how to reset your bank password your bank asks you questions like "where did you meet your first significant other?" Then consider how that event is probably on your Facebook feed.
* Companies like Cambridge Analytica can buy "ads" that are precisely targeted using that data to persuade certain groups of people to show up or not show up at polls and influence elections in non-Democratic ways.
Etc.
Any organization with massive surveillance data that lacks beneficent leaders may harm people.
That's the biggest insight of the article. That's exactly what the likes of Facebook and Google (and telecoms, and data brokers, etc) are doing.