Some have become deeply pessimistic about the internet industry's data collection practices and believe that privacy is gone forever. Indeed, Silicon Valley's dominant technology platforms have engaged in a mass surveillance operation as a matter of businessa topic of discussion that will no doubt come up when the CEOs of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple testify before the House Judiciary Committee later this month. There seems to be no end to their data harvesting, and there is no incentive for these firms to delete the personal information they have already accumulated. They have developed sophisticated inferences about us that are apparently here to stay because they contribute to the high margins experienced across the sector.
