Well considering that the worse that corporations can do with data is sell your privacy compared to the worse that the government can do - throw you in jail if you give them too much power. I’d rather not give government more power.
Trump has outright said that he is in favor of jailing journalists for spreading “fake news”. You know if the government passed a law to “protect privacy” they would give themselves an exemption and want a backdoor.
I’m not debating the worse case. I’m going by history of how the FBI acted in the 60s during the Civil Rights Area and how it currently acts with the “War on Terror” and the “War on Drugs”.
Having a government that is actively hostile to minorities - religious, race, nationality, or sexuality only takes a populist leader who speaks toward their prejudices....
If we're going to go historical, we'll have to include company towns (which Facebook is revisiting as a concept, incidentally) and debt slavery, the Pinkertons machine gunning strikers...
It isn’t “historical” what is happening today in Gitmo, being able to be locked up without a trial if you are deemed a “terrorist”, or secret warrants.
Sure they can. GDPR was necessarily because tech has largely obliterated the right to privacy online, with like buttons, analytics, ad networks, etc.