| ® | 120 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS largely eroded, if not entirely negated, by the widespread use of cell phones, credit cards, social media, and the search engines of the Internet. When we use smart phones, our location is relayed to our telephone service provider every three seconds. The phone compa- nies collect and archive our phone usage “metadata,” which includes whom we called and how long we spoke. When we use Google to search for anyone or anything on the Internet, that activity is captured by Google, a company whose profits mainly come from making available to advertisers the results of its surveillance and collection of its users’ searches, When we use Gmail, Google’s e-mail service, used by nearly one billion senders and recipients, we agree to allow Google to read the actual contents of our correspondence to find keywords of interest to advertisers. When we use a credit card, the credit card company also retains data about what we buy and where we go. When we travel in auto- mobiles equipped with GPS, every turn and stop is tracked and recorded. And when we are in public places with CCTV (closed- circuit television) cameras, our image is recorded and archived. © When we use Facebook, Twitter, and other so-called social media, as re) over two billion people do today, we allow these companies to collect, retain, and exploit their surveillance of our movements, associations with other people, and stated preferences. When we use Amazon and other online stores, we allow them to track and archive a great deal of our commercial activity. For Internet companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo!, like Google, collecting private data on hundreds of millions of their members provides them with vast searchable databases that are easily marketable. The exploitation of these data- bases is a fundamental aspect of their business plans. Without such surveillance of their users, social media companies would not be able to turn a profit. Indeed, they may b