Tech startups selling to police

Re:Tech startups selling to police by afpx on Sunday November 05, 2023 @06:50PM (#38157052)

Saudi princes are some of the largest buyers of PII. I even worked* for a company that would sell data to the US government, and then sell the Saudis the data on what data the US government was using. I have no idea what they are doing with all of it, but they certainly keep a lot of companies profitable.

* I left shortly after the company pivoted into being a PII broker.

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Re:Tech startups selling to police by neilv on Sunday November 05, 2023 @07:41PM (#38157415)

> I even worked* for a company that would sell data to the US government, and then sell [...] the data on what data the US government was using.

That sounds odd, at best.

If the company were considering doing this sketchy-sounding thing, seems like they should've checked with their gov't customer points of contact, or gone straight to the State Dept.

Maybe they did do this, and were operating under permission/instructions, or maybe they didn't.

(Why it's believable that US tech company would sell out its US gov't customers: many facets of "tech" industry have had such irresponsible, sociopathic practices since before many current decision-makers entered the workforce, that I think there's no longer much intuitive sense about what's OK and what's not.)

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Re:Tech startups selling to police by taneq on Sunday November 05, 2023 @07:40PM (#38157398)

Surely they also sold the US government the data on what the Saudis were buying, too? To do otherwise would just be leaving money on the table! /s(ish)

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