J. Edgar Hoover Is Back in The Form of Trump and Technology
J. Edgar Hoover, eat your heart out. Is this really why Elon Musk was brought in?
The late tyrannical FBI director would have been green with envy over the current scope and reach of digital information on virtually everybody. Hoover was notorious for keeping dossiers on the rich and powerful for use when he needed to blackmail someone to get his way. The disreputable Hoover relied on paper trails and informants. Hoover also knew that there are no angels and that most people can be linked to at least one unappealing fact that could be used for blackmail, discrimination or harassment.
But Hoover didn’t have the technology to access the data. Trump has it and he is driven by a perverse need to get even with those he believes have either hurt him, have not paid him significant enough homage or disagree with his ideology. Different than Hoover, trump is infinitely more dangerous because he has potentially instant access to millions of files on virtually every American past and present.
Privacy laws in the U.S. have historically required that government data be siloed away from other agencies to prevent misuse. Trump wants that to change. As trump’s rule reaches the 100-day point, Musk and his farcically named, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have seized personal data about U.S. residents from dozens of federal databases with a goal of merging it all into a master database at the Department of Homeland Security.
Trump has his eyes on the models of population surveillance like the world’s most nefarious and extensive programs in Russia and China, where private information has been used to arrest or discredit political activists. or worse. Under trump and beyond, the U.S. government will likely increase surveillance and data collection, targeting immigrants, abortion providers and gender affirming healthcare.
Timothy Snyder writes in “On Tyranny,” that individuals are free “only insofar as we exercise control over what people know about us, and in what circumstances they come to know it. Whoever can pierce your privacy can humiliate you and disrupt your relationships at will.”
Daniel J. Solove of the George Washington University Law School wrote about “PRIVACY IN AUTHORITARIAN TIMES: SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM AND GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE.”
“Authoritarian governments seek to control people by invading their private lives. They envelop people in surveillance to ensure that people are obedient. They ferret out dissenting thought to be attacked — with threats, ostracism, blacklisting, pretextual law enforcement, and outright criminal penalties. They use personal data to manipulate, blackmail, apprehend, or punish people. Authoritarian power is greatly enhanced in today’s era of pervasive surveillance and relentless data collection.”
Trump is the lead authoritarian but he is a cog of a larger system that includes an army of kleptocrats using the military, police and militias and technological experts who offer surveillance, propaganda and technology.
Historian Anne Elizabeth Applebaum wrote that “Authoritarianism often involves a network of politicians, government officials, media entities, thought leaders, and armies of online trolls. This network is fueled by massive funding by wealthy individuals, organizations, and foreign entities. And it is deeply intertwined with many companies that supply the platforms, tools, and technologies to facilitate the authoritarian aims.”
Thousands of corporations have compiled massive digital dossiers that are readily available for the government to access. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unlawful search and seizure. But the constitution offers little to no protection for much of the personal data in the digital age, largely due to the third-party doctrine. The doctrine, endorsed in the 1970s by the U.S. Supreme Court, says that people forfeit any reasonable expectation of privacy and Fourth Amendment protection when their personal data is held by third parties.
“The third-party doctrine is profoundly outdated and ill-suited to the modern era where vast amounts of personal information are stored and managed by third-party entities,” Solove wrote.
Privacy laws are designed to prevent government agencies from sharing information but even when individuals or groups refuse to share sensitive information such as health conditions, beliefs, and immigration status, the information can be inferred by AI analyzing data like purchasing habits, location history or online behavior. If companies cite privacy laws and refuse to provide the government with data, the government can subpoena or use other legal processes to get the information.
Trump has shown little concern with laws. He well knows that information is power, and it can be used to frighten, discredit or eliminate people because of their identities or beliefs. He would most certainly not blink at weaponizing information about Americans, including bankruptcies, criminal histories and medical claims or halting benefits received through housing vouchers, retirement checks and food assistance.
To cite just one example, during his first administration, trump disclosed details of private text messages of FBI agents who were having an extramarital affair to attack them for not pursing Hilary Clinton.
U.S. laws against using private information have been breached internationally. On Friday, TikTok was fined $600 million for violating a European Union data privacy law after regulators found the company had improperly transferred users’ personal data to China.
The highly politicized subject of abortion has led brokers to sell data on billions of U.S. residents identified as “actively pregnant” or “shopping for maternity products.” The data has been used in states that are seeking to halt use of contraceptives or birth control pills or to prosecute women who have abortions.
An investigation by Gizmodo found that more than two dozen data brokers are promoting access to datasets containing information on millions of pregnant and potentially pregnant women. At least one of the companies offered a large catalogue of people who were using the same sorts of birth control that’s currently being targeted by more restrictive states.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) plans to routinely screen applicants’ social media activity for alleged anti-Semitism when making immigration decisions in millions of cases. The Department of State has started using AI to enforce its “Catch and Revoke” policy and weed out “pro-Hamas” views among visa-holders, particularly college students who have protested against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Facebook uses automated content analysis tools to enforce its “Dangerous Organization and Individuals” policy. But the tools are flawed. Facebook removed all posts containing the word “shaheed” (which means martyr in Arabic), even when an individual was named Shaheed. People named Isis have long been flagged by the automated technologies. Posts by individuals citing the “soup nazi” episode of Seinfeld may also be swept up.
Secret Gatekeepers
One of the main gatekeepers for the secrets is the most powerful man most have never heard of, Chad Engelgau. Angelau is CEO of Acxiom, a data broker that operates one of the world’s biggest repositories of consumer information. The company claims to have granular details on more than 2.5 billion people across 62 different countries.
In the vast world of data, the amount of available information for government just ready to be picked is beyond comprehension. The Rivery data company reported that in 2024, the global volume of data created, captured, copied, and consumed was 149 zettabytes. By the end of 2025, the global volume of data is projected to rise to 181 zettabytes. To put it in perspective, a zettabyte equals 1 sextillion bytes (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes), or the equivalent of storing 250 billion DVDs.
The growth is driven by various factors including the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI), a key driver of data growth, with systems continuously generating, processing, and manipulating vast datasets; real-time data processing; cloud-based storage; and devices with the otherworldly name of IoT or “Internet of Things.”
The Internet of Things refers to a network of physical devices, vehicles, appliances, and other objects that are embedded with sensors, software, and network connectivity, allowing them to collect and share data. IoT devices, also known as “smart objects,” can range from simple “smart home” devices like smart thermostats, to wearables like smartwatches and Radio Frequency Identified Devices (RFID) enabled clothing, to complex industrial machinery and transportation systems. Technologists are even envisioning entire “smart cities” predicated on IoT technologies.
IoT enables smart devices to communicate with each other and with other Internet-enabled devices like smartphones and gateways, creating a vast network of interconnected devices that can exchange data and perform various tasks autonomously. It is all good news for those bottom feeders who seek to mine and control the data for evil purposes.
Most of the data collected and sold by Acxiom is used by advertisers to identify groups of individuals but a growing piece of the business is processing, aggregating and normalizing other companies’ data.
Acxiom and a dozen other similar companies know a whole lot about every American and they are more than willing to sell their valued information. That is bad news for Americans but good news for authoritarian rulers like trump and his followers.
Some companies like Venntel, sell their data exclusively to the government. Most recently Venntel provided location data from smart phone apps to track undocumented immigrants.
Sensitive personal data is extremely valuable to private and public sources. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the watchdog for illegal use or sale of data. In December, the FTC banned data broker Gravy Analytics and its subsidiary, Venntel, and a third company, Mobilewalla, from collecting, using, and selling “sensitive” location data of Americans. The companies illegally collected and sold information that could be used to track people to healthcare facilities, military bases, religious sites, labor union gatherings, and other sensitive locations, the FDC charged.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the three companies delt with information about law enforcement, judges and members of the armed forces “on the open market” to “anyone with a credit card,” putting citizens and military personnel in danger. Wyden also said U.S. government agencies spied on Americans by obtaining the data without warrants.
“Many federal agencies hid behind the flimsy claim that Americans consented to the sale of their data, but the FTC’s orders make it clear how untrue these claims were,” said Wyden.
The N.Y. Times recently identified 314 intimate details of every day American lives that are available to the government. It ranges from addiction treatment records, adopted child’s names, adverse credit history and alimony to gambling income, IP addresses, high school records and HIV services and much, much more.
The information is held in disconnected data systems in the federal government, including Treasury, Social Security Administration, Department of Education and other agencies. Trump wants all the info in one place at his dirty little fingertips. He signed an executive order calling for consolidation of the records. Trump also wants “unfettered access to comprehensive data” held by states related to programs that receive federal funding.
The point man is the strange Musk and his obedient DOGE worker bees who have sought access to dozens of federal government databases. The Muskettes are the subject of dozens of lawsuits and were temporarily blocked from accessing Social Security data. An appeals court, however, reversed a preliminary injunction barring the group’s access at the Treasury, the Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management.
The Internal Revenue Service agreed to help the Department of Homeland Security obtain closely held taxpayer data to help identify immigrants for deportation. In the wake of the decision, the acting I.R.S. commissioner and other top officials are preparing to resign.
Big Three
The “Big Three” multinational, credit-reporting agencies are TransUnion, Equifax and Experian plc, based in Dublin, Ireland. Experian collects and aggregates information on more than 1 billion people and businesses including 235 million individual U.S. consumers and more than 25 million U.S. businesses.
In addition to credit services, Experian sells decision analytic and marketing assistance to businesses, including individual fingerprinting and targeting. Its consumer services include online access to credit history and products meant to protect from fraud and identity theft.
Experian uses the Mosaic market segmentation tool, which also is used by political parties to identify groups of voters. In the British version there are 15 main groups, broken down into 89 hyperspecific categories, from “corporate chieftains” to “golden empty-nesters” which can be taken down to the level of individual postcodes.
Mosaic is a comprehensive consumer segmentation tool that helps businesses understand their customers better by segmenting them based on demographics, behaviors, and lifestyle characteristics. Mosaic uses more than 300 data attributes to classify the makeup of Americans and assign individual households to specific segments.
Equifax Inc. is an American multinational consumer credit reporting agency headquartered in Atlanta, Ga. It collects and aggregates information on more than 800 million individual consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide. Equifax operates or has investments in 24 countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. With more than 14,000 employees worldwide, Equifax has nearly $5 billion in annual revenue.
Equifax primarily operates in the business-to-business sector, selling consumer credit and insurance reports and related analytics to businesses in a range of industries. Business customers include retailers, insurance firms, healthcare providers, utilities, government agencies, as well as banks, credit unions, personal and specialty finance companies and other financial institutions
Reporting agencies have frequently been sued and found to report erroneous information. One case involved a suit filed in 2014 by God Gazarov, who claimed the company erroneously reported him as having no credit history because of his unusual first name. Gazarov settled his lawsuit in May 2015, with Equifax agreeing to enter his name into their database.