How Privacy Became a Commodity for the Rich and Powerful [Only]

"The surveillance economy works on such information asymmetry: Data-mining companies know everything about us, but we know very little about what they know. And just as 'privacy' has grown into an anxious buzzword, the powerful have co-opted it in order to maintain control over others and evade accountability. As we bargain away the amount of privacy that an ordinary person expects, we’ve also watched businesses and government figures grow ever more indignant about their own need to be left alone."