from the corruption-kills dept There are two major reasons that the U.S. doesn’t pass an internet-era privacy law or regulate data brokers despite  a parade of dangerous scandals . One, lobbied by a vast web of interconnected industries with unlimited budgets, Congress  is too corrupt to do its job . Two, the U.S. government is disincentivized to do anything because it exploits this privacy dysfunction to  dodge domestic surveillance warrants . If we imposed safeguards on consumer data, everybody from app makers to telecoms would make billions less per quarter. So our corrupt lawmakers pretend the vast human harms of our greed are a distant and unavoidable externality (unless the privacy issues involve some kid tracking rich people on their planes, of course, in which case Congress moves with  a haste that would break the sound barrier ). I’ve warned about this for the last decade here at Techdirt, and the check is coming due.…