John Oliver goes to 'creepy' lengths to persuade Congress to enact online privacy laws

"We've all had unsettling moments when it became clear that our computer was monitoring our activities a little more closely than we might like," hitting us with "oddly specific" ads, John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. "And tonight we're going to talk about who make that possible: Data brokers," the "middlemen of surveillance capitalism."

"Data brokers operate in a sprawling, unregulated ecosystem which can get very creepy, very fast," Oliver said. "They know significantly more about you than you might like, and do significantly more with it than you might think." You may not care about your online breadcrumbs being collected and sold, or "you may be thinking, Okay, I think I get it, I am sufficiently creeped out, there is nothing more that you need to tell me," he added. Well, "what about the fact that apps on your phone can give away your exact location to third parties, sometimes without you even knowing it?"

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.