Eben Moglen said the same thing during the Q&A at his HOPE 2012 talk:
I don't think that the problem of collecting too much is now primarily a byproduct of careless regulation. The problem of collecting too much arises from the fact that the future of capitalism is in the data mining and control of its customers. When capitalist societies begin to depend more on consumption than they do on production for their overall economic health, and the GDP of the United States has been primarily consumption for more than 15 years now, then knowing how to control consumers becomes as important as knowing how to control productive machines was when the GDP was primarily based upon production rather than consumption. What is happening is that we are automating and instrumenting the portion of the economy which is most powerfully important, namely consumption.
Collecting information about consumers is the same thing as knowing how the mill machines worked to the capitalists of the 19th century. So what we are confronting is not the accident of perverse incentives created as a byproduct of unintended consequences of regulation. We are facing the fact that doing the wrong thing is the basis of future economic growth.
We are not trying to destroy future economic growth, we are trying to compromise among values. That's what regulation is. It's a messy process. Of course it has unintended consequences. Naturally it creates perverse incentives, because it's imperfect. But understanding the objective has to be clear: productive capitalism met ecological constraints. It dirtied the water too much, it dirtied the air too much, it created too many difficulties that had to be constrained as negative externalities produced by production. The attempt to regiment and govern consumption through data mining raises ecologic problems we must solve.
I don't think that the problem of collecting too much is now primarily a byproduct of careless regulation. The problem of collecting too much arises from the fact that the future of capitalism is in the data mining and control of its customers. When capitalist societies begin to depend more on consumption than they do on production for their overall economic health, and the GDP of the United States has been primarily consumption for more than 15 years now, then knowing how to control consumers becomes as important as knowing how to control productive machines was when the GDP was primarily based upon production rather than consumption. What is happening is that we are automating and instrumenting the portion of the economy which is most powerfully important, namely consumption.
Collecting information about consumers is the same thing as knowing how the mill machines worked to the capitalists of the 19th century. So what we are confronting is not the accident of perverse incentives created as a byproduct of unintended consequences of regulation. We are facing the fact that doing the wrong thing is the basis of future economic growth.
We are not trying to destroy future economic growth, we are trying to compromise among values. That's what regulation is. It's a messy process. Of course it has unintended consequences. Naturally it creates perverse incentives, because it's imperfect. But understanding the objective has to be clear: productive capitalism met ecological constraints. It dirtied the water too much, it dirtied the air too much, it created too many difficulties that had to be constrained as negative externalities produced by production. The attempt to regiment and govern consumption through data mining raises ecologic problems we must solve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY43zF_eHu4 at 54:20