Even when Congress tries to restrict government agencies from illegally gathering information on people, the agencies simply exploit legal loopholes or just break the law—without consequences.
Original Article: Government Agencies Exploit Data Brokers as End-Around to Legal Restrictions

Data is sometimes referred to as today’s most valuable commodity. Given the technologically focused world around us, data is generated with almost everything we do or consume, whether you use Apple Pay to purchase goods from a retail outfit or use a credit card for your Uber Eats order. It is, in other words, largely unavoidable to create a digital footprint. This continuously produced data is often monitored, retained, repackaged, and resold to third parties—including the federal government—by shadowy organizations referred to as data brokers.
A data broker is a business that aggregates information from several sources or enriches, cleanses, or analyzes this information, according to Gartner. As third parties, data brokers do not have the same financial incentives to protect consumer data

In the past decade, the growth of the Internet and social media has brought with it a dramatic uptick in populist sentiment. Legacy institutions have declared war against populism, referring to its claims as “misinformation” or “disinformation” and calling on the government or government-adjacent actors (herein referred to as “the censors”) to clamp down on such claims as they spread across the Internet like wildfire. The censors rarely decline these opportunities to silence criticism, justifying the censorship as a matter of “national security.”
More than other Western nations, the United States champions freedom of speech. But it has frequently failed in its aspirations, beginning in 1798 with the Alien and Sedition Acts. There are countless examples since then of the US failing to

States continue to seek new ways to make the financial system an “economic chokepoint” enabling the state to crack down on specific organizations, individuals, or activities.

Original Article: “The West’s Russia Sanctions Show Why States Want to Weaponize the Financial System”
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

In times of crisis, governments have a tendency to overcompensate for risk. This tendency may be in the public’s best interest, but it could also serve broader governmental interests. The public and government’s interest are not always one and the same.

When one imagines working on Wall Street, he envisions stock traders scrambling to place buy or sell orders, perhaps even some puts or options. Today’s powerful artificial intelligence tools allow traders to game stock market trading. In some ways, this computer-driven high-frequency trading resembles actual gaming in that it may seem as if one is simulating various trading scenarios.

In today’s political discourse, the minimum wage is frequently mentioned by the more progressive members of Congress. On a basic level, raising the minimum wage appears to be a sympathetic policy for low-income wage earners. Often kept out of the conversation, however, are the downstream effects of this proposal.