We receive breach notices, sometimes monthly, from corporations and tech companies, then are left to navigate a system designed not to hear us.
We are expected to accept—calmly, repeatedly—that our most personal information will be collected without consent, sold without our knowledge, exposed without consequence, and buried in legalese designed not to be read.
If we try to push back citing privacy and data breach concerns, then most often access to basic services—banking, transportation, apps, social media, medicare, social security, even healthcare—can and is quite often denied.
Congress’s message is clear and simple: this is “the cost of modern life,” it is your problem. Deal with it.
However, it isn’t the “people’s problem.” We did not create it. Members of Congress did.
It’s the price we pay for the political choices made by our elected officials.
Career “Servants of the People?”
It is all too apparent that Congress has no intention to ensure that our privacy, security and data be secure. Why is that? Could it be that their donors and lobbyist will become angry and back someone else when it is time to contrive another two, four or six years in office?
Because when the White House and Congress feel personally threatened, they don’t shrug—they act. Fast. Fast enough to give us all, who are paying attention, whiplash.
There’s a built-in assumption of importance, even righteousness in Washington. That arrogance permeates down to the state level as well, in some cases. Trump, Graham, Jeffries, and the rest weren’t chosen by God, nor are they righteous. They were chosen by power, money, and influence. It’s sordid, twisted propaganda—used to convince voters to elect compromised, self-serving individuals who, once in office, show little concern for the people who put them there.
In the event that my words are too obscure, let me clarify: God has nothing to do with politics or presidents.
And once they’re in office, they protect themselves accordingly. That is the whole con of Washington. Longevity, power, money, influence. The messaging is the government could not continue, that our country would fall apart, without them. That is wrong thinking. That is a lie.
To think, that someone like Trump, who hails from privilege, is deem more important more than 348.7 million American lives is beyond comprehension.
It’s not just Trump.
Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris—along with a long list of officials, past and present, who have done more harm than good over the years. Figures such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama are often cited in this context, alongside Republican leaders including John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and Rick Scott.Through the power and reach of their offices, they have supported or enabled policies that inflicted profound economic, data, and privacy harms on Americans, while also backing a system of wars-for-profit—military actions that have devastated sovereign nations and cost countless lives far beyond our borders, often with little clear connection to genuine national security.
Americans lives don’t matter. Except to pay taxes and to keep those in power—in power.
Members of Congress and their families are backed by a taxpayer-funded security apparatus that treats risk as something to be prevented—not managed after the damage is done. They have coordinated physical protection, threat assessments, cybersecurity support, privacy guidance, and direct funding to secure their homes, offices, and communications.
Congress does not receive breach notices.
They receive protection.
And when officials are targeted, Congress moves quickly to limit how easily their personal information can be exposed. In those moments, they understand exactly what personal data is: vulnerability.
That understanding stops with defending their interest, not the America people.
For the rest of us, the model is different.
Our data is not treated as something to be protected. It is treated as something to be used—collected, aggregated, analyzed, and sold across systems we never agreed to be part of.
And when it inevitably leaks—because it does, constantly—we get a letter, months or a year later, a muted apology, and a free year of credit monitoring, often from the same industry that helped create the risk in the first place. We are told to remain vigilant, as though vigilance can compensate for a exploitive system built on exposure.
At this point, breach notices are not warnings. They are routine. Normalized.
The question is no longer whether our data has been compromised. It is how often.
Now add the credit bureaus—Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
These companies help determine whether we can access basic parts of modern life: a car loan, a mortgage, an apartment, a credit line, sometimes even employment. We do not opt into this system. We are forced to exist inside it.
And when it fails, we carry the burden.
Fixing an error in a credit file feels less like exercising a right and more like navigating a system designed to exhaust us. We file a dispute. We wait. We receive a templated response. We refile. We escalate. We prove our identity again. All while the consequences of that error—higher costs, lost opportunities, denied access—remain ours to absorb.
We are expected to correct the record.
The system is not expected to get it right.
Bait and Switch
None of this is new. None of it is hidden. But what is not spoken aloud is that we, over the past few decades, have been conned into believing, propagandized to repeatedly—tech makes all of our lives easier to navigate, is safer and saves us money. Trust the government. Trust technology. Trust the credit bureaus. Trust Congress, they have our backs.
Present day
We are being strong armed into complying with government and tech companies demands that if we don’t allow them access to our lives, or if we refuse so-called “limited” access to our data, Americans find that they will not be able to collect social security (that we paid into all of our lives), and are denied access to bank accounts, or turned away from health care providers owned and operated by private equity profiteers.
What was once touted as less costly, costs us dearly in wasted time, data exploitation, and money. We are now paying capitalist predators to steal our data and open bank accounts…
In other words, we are forced into giving up our data, negating our privacy in order to live in a high tech society that violates and abuses the end user.
The risks are known. The breaches are constant. The failures are documented.
And still, nothing fundamental changes.
Because changing it would require confronting the business model—one that depends on the continuous collection, retention, and monetization of our personal data. It would require limits. It would require enforcement. It would require choosing people over profit.
A line is maintained. Them vs Us.
When risk reaches Congress, it becomes a matter of security.
When risk reaches us, it becomes a matter of collateral damage.
Security is funded, structured, and proactive.
Inconvenience is processed, documented, and delayed. Covered up.
That distinction defines the system.
American lives are expendable.
American lives are expendable. Americans are bred to be used and abused by foreign actors and technology. Americans are bred to ensure the illusion of democracy by a forced-choice electoral system. Americans are bred to fill the coffers of the federal war machine. Americans are bred not to question.
Congress protects itself. Not the People.
Our data is not simply mishandled. It is treated as expendable within a framework that assumes breach, error, and exposure are acceptable costs of doing business.
But those costs are not absorbed by the system.
They are pushed onto us.
Identity theft. Financial disruption. Lost housing opportunities. Higher borrowing costs. Hours spent correcting errors we didn’t create.
This is not incidental. It is predictable.
Congress has the authority to change it. It could impose limits on data collection and retention. It could separate credit reporting from broader data exploitation. It could enforce accuracy and accountability. It could give us real control over our own information.
Congress has chosen not to protect the American people. Because congress acts on behalf of itself collectively, corporations and their donors; not their constituents, people like you and me.
When Congress protects itself faster than it protects us, when corporations lose our data without consequence, and when correcting errors becomes our responsibility instead of theirs, the conclusion is unavoidable:
We are victims of Washington and the people elected into office—of a system that continues to protect power and profit while treating the public as expendable.
Expendable—like the countless unarmed civilians whose bodies are torn apart in the blast zones of U.S. wars-for-profit.
