they're already abusing our data. adtech sells to the US army (pointedly: data from apps that are marketed to Muslims). if you wait for the exploitation to be absolute before dealing with it, you'll miss the opportunity to deal with it at all

The exploitation will never become absolute. Yes, blurred lines are very dangerous, and yes an opportunity is being missed here, but the scale of the danger is being overestimated. The next data crisis will be entirely unexpected but obvious in retrospect. (like every single google account being breached).

That's orthogonal to the discussion, though. The concern isn't about cybersecurity, or breaches - this is about governments and companies abusing their access. The concern is that given enough time / development / etc handing _anyone_ a "track all folks down to the millimeter" is a fundamentally dangerous proposition.

We know for a fact that government agencies misbehave. Imagine McCarthy's America, but with the ability to programatically crawl your every movement and spoken word. _That's_ the nightmare scenario.

imho Western Democracy is too strong and data gathering is too weak to make this an immediate concern. even if democracy unravels and the tech matures it may well be less potent and/or effective than feared. A far more pressing concern is a large data breach, which is possible and probable.

...which is not practical and therefore only of consequence for a person of interest, i.e. a criminal or suspected criminal. I'm not saying it isn't a big problem, (suspicions can be invented) i'm just pointing out it is unlikely to lead to a dystopia. I think that laws will be drafted to invalidate most data as evidence in court (since minor offenses are universal and can't all be prosecuted).