How An Obscure App Turned Millions Into Unwitting Spies For The US Military
June 26th, 2021Via: ZeroHedge:
There’s a growing cottage industry at the nexus of consumer research and government surveillance.
In a report published Friday, the Wall Street Journal explored the world of Premise Data Corp., an innocently-named firm that uses a network of users, many in the developing world, who complete basic tasks for small commissions. Assignments can range from snapping photos of competitors’ stores, to counting the number of ATMs in a given area, to reporting on the price of consumer goods on the shelf.
Roughly half of the firm’s clients are private businesses seeking “commercial information” (mostly reporting on competitors’ operations), both the US government and foreign governments have hired the firm to do more advanced reconnaissance work while gauging public opinion.
