I'd say it's already relevant. From an article last week [0], location data identifying visits to Planned Parenthood was easily purchasable. While this particular company removed that category in response to the article [1], there's nothing that would prevent other data brokers from selling the same information. The US is far, far overdue for a GDPR-style privacy law.
(Also, we need a better term than "data brokers", as that term is biased toward their legitimacy. "Digital stalkers" or "stalkers for hire" imply that the stalking occurs after the point of hire, rather than being proactively performed on everybody. "Privacy abusers" is accurate, but non-specific. I don't have a term that would encompass the omnipresent spying, the danger of a dataset's existence against future threats, and the low price they put on our privacy. Bonus points if the term could call out the false dichotomy of public vs private.)
Edit: That said, advocating for privacy is not advocating for cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are by design massively inefficient, in the same way that a low-trust society is inefficient, and somehow touts that as a virtue.
(Also, we need a better term than "data brokers", as that term is biased toward their legitimacy. "Digital stalkers" or "stalkers for hire" imply that the stalking occurs after the point of hire, rather than being proactively performed on everybody. "Privacy abusers" is accurate, but non-specific. I don't have a term that would encompass the omnipresent spying, the danger of a dataset's existence against future threats, and the low price they put on our privacy. Bonus points if the term could call out the false dichotomy of public vs private.)
[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vzjb/location-data-abortio...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/data-broker-safegraph-stops-...
Edit: That said, advocating for privacy is not advocating for cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are by design massively inefficient, in the same way that a low-trust society is inefficient, and somehow touts that as a virtue.