I believe he's mixing market and government data harvesting as a single entity.
On the other hand, the tools are eerily similar. It would be relatively easy for instance to re-purpose Google's spam filter into a threat detector, or customer profiler. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if 2 of those three actually share a fair bit of code.
As Eben Moglen said, the main threat is not data going out. It's code going in. Who knows what the vendors will invent, and who knows which of those inventions will be re-purposed or re-implemented a few semesters later.
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On the other hand, the tools are eerily similar. It would be relatively easy for instance to re-purpose Google's spam filter into a threat detector, or customer profiler. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if 2 of those three actually share a fair bit of code.
As Eben Moglen said, the main threat is not data going out. It's code going in. Who knows what the vendors will invent, and who knows which of those inventions will be re-purposed or re-implemented a few semesters later.