Author Archives: Denise Simon

Was bin Ladin in the IRS Files for Obamacare?

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I remember very well saying a few years ago that any foreigner, including Usama bin Ladin could get Obamacare benefits. Never understood how true my conclusions were. Further, there was a movement in the House to impeach the IRS Commissioner. Then we learned that more hard drives have been destroyed, others were found in storage and billions in refunds went to a handful of same mail address locations in obscure places outside the United States.

Not only is Obamacare a failure itself, but it really does not become full law until 2017 and it is a law we can no longer begin to afford when the IRS cant recover bogus subsidies to illegals.

Fasten your seat belt.

Senate report: Illegal immigrants benefited from up to $750M in ObamaCare subsidies

FNC: Illegal immigrants and individuals with unclear legal status wrongly benefited from up to $750 million in ObamaCare subsidies and the government is struggling to recoup the money, according to a new Senate report obtained by Fox News.

The report, produced by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, examined Affordable Care Act tax credits meant to defray the cost of insurance premiums. It found that as of June 2015, “the Administration awarded approximately $750 million in tax credits on behalf of individuals who were later determined to be ineligible because they failed to verify their citizenship, status as a national, or legal presence.”

The review found the credits went to more than 500,000 people – who are either illegal immigrants or whose legal status was unclear due to insufficient records.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services confirmed to FoxNews.com on Monday that 471,000 customers with 2015 coverage failed to produce proper documentation on their citizenship or immigration status on time – but stressed that this does not necessarily mean they’re ineligible.

“Lack of verification does not mean an individual is ineligible for financial assistance, but only that a Marketplace did not receive sufficient information to verify eligibility in the time period outlined in the law,” CMS spokesman Aaron Albright said.

The Senate report also accused the administration of lacking a solid plan to get that money back – and predicted that in the end, the IRS will be “unable to fully recoup the funds.”

“The information provided to the Committee by the IRS and HHS reveals a troubling lack of coordination between the two agencies … and demonstrates that the IRS and HHS neglected to consider how they would recover these wasteful payments,” the report says.

Under the law, the feds can dole out these payments on a temporary basis if a recipient’s legal status is unclear, but are supposed to cut off funding and coverage if the recipient does not later come up with the paperwork. Up to a half-million “ineligible” people, according to the report, applied in this way — with their credits paid in advance to the insurers. The IRS, though, is supposed to get overpayments back from the individuals themselves.

The Senate report, based on a review launched by committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., derisively describes this approach as “pay and chase.”

In other words, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pays credits and subsidies to the insurance companies on behalf of the applicants – and the feds then “chase” after any overpayments to ineligible people once they are discovered.

“This ‘pay and chase’ model has potentially cost taxpayers approximately $750 million,” the report says. The 500,000 individuals in question have been removed from coverage, according to the findings, as the government seeks to get the money back.

The Senate report says the IRS and HHS initially failed to coordinate on a plan for recouping funds, and claimed that a subsequent plan from the IRS to recoup the money is still “ineffective and insufficient.”

In a July letter to Johnson, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen assured that the agency is “committed to identifying and efficiently addressing” improper payments. He reiterated that anyone “not lawfully present” who enrolls for ObamaCare coverage “must repay” the advance premium credit payments, and would be breaking the law if they don’t.

Obama Going for it All Including Moon Shot

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There are organizations out there trying to get some great bills passed. Too bad they wont affect Obama himself. But when it comes to Congress wanting a pay raise, how about a Fiscal Responsibility Act first?

Obama’s go-for-broke budget

Congress has already dismissed the proposal, sight unseen.

Politico: President Barack Obama may be a lame duck, but his aggressively liberal final budget request coming Tuesday will show he’s far from a mute one.

Even as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders quarrel over who’s a “progressive” and who’s not, the president will propose a sweepingly progressive policy agenda that includes a $10-a-barrel oil tax, an expensive Medicaid expansion, a $4 billion initiative to promote computer science in public schools and the first down payment on a “moon shot” research initiative to cure cancer led by Vice President Joe Biden.

Never mind that Congress, in a break with tradition, said it won’t even hold hearings on this year’s budget request. That’s because the request “will continue to focus on new spending proposals” instead of tackling “our $19 trillion in debt,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) said last week. Complete details on proposed total spending, projected deficits and other information will be released Tuesday morning.

Given Congress’ sight-unseen dismissal, the president’s go-for-broke strategy makes sense, said Peter Orszag, who was White House budget director during Obama’s first term and director of the Congressional Budget Office before that.

“If the document is legislatively irrelevant,” Orszag said, “you might as well use it to expand the policy dialogue and lay out sensible proposals even if they will not become law this year or next.” This year’s budget proposal “lays the groundwork for Democrats to refine and embrace a more ambitious legislative agenda over time.”

Lame-duck presidential budget requests nearly always receive catcalls from Congress, especially when it’s controlled by the opposite party.

In February 2008, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi scored President George W. Bush’s “misguided” final budget for cuts in health care and energy assistance and a too-large budget deficit. The final product was a mashup from Congress, the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration. It yielded a $1.4 trillion deficit — the largest in U.S. history, in large part because of the financial crisis. The current deficit is an estimated $544 billion.

President Bill Clinton’s final budget, submitted in February 2000, was less contentious, in part because it adhered to a 1997 agreement with the Republican-controlled Congress on debt reduction. Clinton had the opposite problem: His budget’s spending levels were judged too high, and its budget surplus — which ended up being $1.3 billion — drew sharp criticism from Republicans, including candidate Bush, who wanted to return it to the public in the form of tax cuts. The novel problem of a budget surplus proved short-lived; it vanished the following year, and hasn’t been heard from since.

Where Obama’s lame-duck policy agenda differs, suggests presidential historian Michael Beschloss, is in the scope of its ambition. “Modern presidents have tended to focus on a particular project” in their last year, Beschloss said — “for instance, Eisenhower and Reagan trying to wind down the Cold War, or Johnson trying to find peace in Vietnam.” But Obama is different. He’s “looking for ways in his final year to pursue an agenda on many fronts” in hopes not only of “getting something done” but also “nudging his successor to do certain things.”

It is the policy, perhaps, of a departing president who — given this year’s unusually chaotic GOP primary race — feels more confident than most that his party will keep the White House.

The boldest of all the budget proposals is the $10-a-barrel crude oil tax. Energy taxes are always a hard sell — nobody’s raised the federal gasoline tax, for instance, since 1993 — and although consumers may be less resistant because of low pump prices, oil companies will be more so because falling gas prices have them reducing exploration and laying off workers.

The revenues would go not toward deficit reduction, but toward more green forms of transportation such as subways, buses and light rail. House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady immediately denounced the plan as a “horrible idea” and a “waste of time,” and even some congressional Democrats will likely oppose it. But environmentalists are greeting it as an overdue down payment on reducing emissions that contribute to climate change. Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said it “underscores the inevitable transition away from oil.”

The president’s proposed Medicaid expansion would extend the Affordable Care Act’s promise of three years’ full federal funding for ACA-created Medicaid coverage, which expires this year. The proposal is an inducement to the 19 states that continue not to participate in the program, which was created for families whose incomes were too low to qualify for federal subsidies to purchase private insurance plans through Obamacare exchanges.

Under the budget proposal, states would still get only three years’ full federal funding, after which they would gradually have to pick up 10 percent of program costs. The carrot is that they would no longer have to act by the end of 2016. A stick originally envisioned by the ACA’s authors — that states could not refuse the ACA Medicaid expansion without withdrawing from Medicaid entirely — was itself swatted away in the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling that otherwise upheld Obamacare. The new extension is a rebuke of sorts to House Republicans who have voted repeatedly to repeal Obamacare and who last month sent to the White House a repeal bill that for the first time passed both the House and Senate — which the president promptly vetoed.

The budget’s new K-12 computer science program isn’t intrinsically partisan — both Democrats and Republicans favor enhancing school kids’ computer skills, not to mention big tech companies like Microsoft. But its $4 billion price tag raises GOP hackles, as does the notion of attaching more strings to federal aid to schools. “Rather than calling for additional federal programs or new funding streams,” an aide to Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) complained, “the president can help students by using his bully pulpit to highlight states working in innovative ways to help their children succeed.”

The “cancer moon shot” is similarly uncontroversial in theory; after all, it was President Richard Nixon, a Republican, who proposed waging a federal “war on cancer” back in 1971. But the down payment of nearly $1 billion that the White House seeks is high, and congressional Republicans won’t like that the plan would largely bypass the appropriations process and give Vice President Joe Biden a relatively free hand in allocating some of the funds. In addition, the plan would compel medical researchers to quicken the pace at which they share data, an idea that is already receiving considerable pushback in academia. Jeffrey Dazen, editor of the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine, publicly decried the use of medical research by “data parasites.”

The likelihood of legislative action on any of these agenda items is virtually nil.

Still, observes Rutgers historian David Greenberg, author of a new book about presidential spin: “No one wants to admit that the last year will be an uneventful one.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/obamas-radical-final-budget-218944#ixzz3zbtYLPAO

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/obamas-radical-final-budget-218944#ixzz3zbtQUHcX

 

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/obamas-radical-final-budget-218944#ixzz3zbtHTeC9

 

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/obamas-radical-final-budget-218944#ixzz3zbt9O7NB

 

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/obamas-radical-final-budget-218944#ixzz3zbt2eChp

Watch Out America, Venezuela a Failed State

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Venezuela Is About to Go Bust

Nagel/ForeignPolicy: Venezuela’s economy is facing a tsunami of bad news. The country is suffering from the world’s deepest recession, highest inflation rate, and highest credit risk — all problems aggravated by plunging oil prices. Despite all its troubles, though, until now Venezuela has kept making payments on its $100-billion-plus foreign debt.

That is about to end. In recent days a consensus has emerged among market analysts:

Venezuela will have to default. The only question is when.

Venezuela will have to default. The only question is when.

A Venezuela meltdown could rock financial markets, and people around the world will lose a lot of money. But we should all save our collective sympathy — both the government in Caracas and the investors who enabled it had it coming.

In the last few years, the Venezuelan government has been steadfast about staying in good graces with its lenders. It has paid arrears on its debt religiously, and has constantly asserted that it will continue paying.

But it has neglected to implement the reforms Venezuela would need to improve the fundamentals of its economy. Its commitment to socialist “populism” and the complicated internal dynamics within the governing coalition have paralyzed the government. It has repeatedly postponed important reforms like eliminating its absurd exchange rate controls (the country has at least four exchange rates) or raising the domestic price of gasoline (the cheapest in the world by far). Instead, the government has “adjusted” by shutting off imports, leaving store shelves all over the country barren.

This strategy now seems unsustainable. According to various estimates, in 2015 Venezuela imported about $32 billion worth of goods. This was a marked drop from the previous year. This year, given current oil prices and dwindling foreign reserves, if Venezuela were to pay off its obligations — at least $10 billion — and maintain government spending, it would have to import close to nothing. In a country that imports most of what it consumes, this would ensure mayhem. That is why all analysts predict default in the coming months.

The Economist has joined the chorus, saying that “the government has run out of dollars.” In the words of Harvard professor Ricardo Hausmann, this will be “the largest and messiest emerging market sovereign default since the Argentine crisis of 2001.”

One of the reasons the coming default will be so messy is the many instruments involved, all issued under widely varying conditions. Part of the stock of debt was issued by PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, which owns significant assets overseas (For example, Citgo is 100 percent owned by the Venezuelan government). Another part of the debt was issued by the national government directly, while another big chunk is owed to China, under secretive terms.

The Chinese issue looms large. China’s loans to Venezuela — close to about $18 billion, according to Barclay’s – consist of short-term financing payable via oil shipments. As the price of oil collapses, Venezuela needs to ship more oil to China in order to pay them back. Barclay’s estimates that right now this is close to 800,000 barrels per day, leaving little more than a million barrels per day Venezuela can sell for cash.

A default will send ripples beyond Wall Street. Many people have been buying high-risk, high-return Venezuelan debt for years — from pension funds in far-off countries to small banks in developing ones. Most stand to lose their shirts. Yet the signs that this was unsustainable were there for all to see.

For years, Venezuela has had a massive budget deficit, sustained only by exorbitant oil prices. For years, analysts have been warning that the Venezuelan government would rather chew nails that allow the private sector to grow. And yes, a lot of that borrowed money was used to help establish a narco-military kleptocracy.

It is impossible to untangle the ethical implications of all of this. Lending Venezuela money is what business ethics professors talk about when they question “winning at someone else’s expense.” Losing money from investing in Venezuela is akin to losing it from, say, funding a company that engages in morally reprehensible acts. (Insert the name of your favorite evil corporate villain here).

Investors in companies with “tainted profits” from, say, engaging in child labor or violating human rights should not get the world’s sympathy, nor should they be bailed out. Similarly, investors in Venezuelan debt have only their hubris to blame.

In a few months, once the rubble of the Bolivarian revolution is cleared, the discussion will turn to how Venezuela can be helped. It would be smart to remember that aid should come to the Venezuelan people first. As the scarcity of food and medicine grows,

Venezuela may become the first petro-state to face a humanitarian disaster.

Venezuela may become the first petro-state to face a humanitarian disaster.

If and when a responsible government in Caracas asks for foreign assistance, solving this urgent issue should be at the top of the agenda. Conditions on financial assistance should privilege the interests of Venezuelans caught in the debacle above the interests of angry hedge fun managers or international bankers.

In other words, the Venezuelan people should come first. The folks who enabled this catastrophe? They can wait.

 

Beyond U.S. Campaigning: ISIS Killed 300

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ISIS executes 300 Iraqis in Mosul, including activists and former soldiers

ARA News 

ERBIL –Extremists of the Islamic State (ISIS) have executed some 300 Iraqi people in Mosul city of the northwestern Nineveh province, an official said on Sunday.

The victims included civilian activists and former members of the Iraqi army and national security.

Official spokesman of the Iraqi army in Nineveh Mahmoud Souraji confirmed the execution of 300 people at the hands of ISIS militants in Mosul over the last few days.

“The terror group has conducted the executions at different locations across Mosul,” he said. “Most of the victims were killed inside the group’s detention centers in the city and its surroundings.”

According to Souraji, who spoke to the local Sumariyah television on Sunday, the majority of those executed were former members of the national security and the Iraqi governmental troops.

“Among them were also a number of media activists who have been detained by the terror group (ISIS) last week in separate raids,” the official said.

Souraji, who based his information on ISIS-linked sources in Mosul, pointed out that the executions were carried out by firing squad.

The victims were reportedly exposed to torture at the hands of foreign jihadis of ISIS before being executed. They have been buried in mass graves in Mosul suburb.

*** While the State Department says much of what is on the internet about Islamic State winning is false, heh….well, killing 300 is significant. Further, what is the leadership of Islamic State doing now….

An Account of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi & Islamic State Succession Lines

by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Abu al-Waleed al-Salafi, whose complete history of Jamaat Ansar al-Islam I have previously translated, has also written Twitter essays on Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and compiled lists of names of individuals who came to hold key positions within the ranks of the Islamic State and its leaders. I have translated these essays below.

I do not necessarily vouch for all the information presented here and working out exact datings can be difficult. Nonetheless I have tried to summarize the most important information in a table below. Explanatory notes of my own occur in square brackets. If more data become available I will add them to this post as updates.

Readers should pay particular attention to cases of overlap: that is, where an individual holds more than one leadership position in the organzation. Of interest also is the shift to the establishment of a military council during Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s tenure as overall leader.

Leader Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi Abu Hamza al-Muhajir Abu Omar al-Baghdadi Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Overall deputy Abu Anas al-Shami, Abu Muhammad al-Lubnani, Abu Talha al-Ansari Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Fellahi

Abu Hamza al-Muhajir

 Hajji Bakr

Abu Muslim al-Turkomani

 Abu Ali al-Anbari [aka Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Afri]
Iraq deputy Abu Muslim al-Turkomani Abu Fatima al-Jiburi
Syria deputy Abu Ali al-Anbari Abu al-Athir al-Absi [previously linked to Syrian Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen & ISIS wali of Aleppo province]
War Minister (followed by head of Military Council) Abu Hamza al-Muhajir Al-Nasir li-Din Allah Abu Sulayman Hajji Bakr

Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Baylawi

Abu Muslim al-Turkomani

Abu Saleh al-Obaidi
Hay’at al-Arkan Abu Ahmad al-Alwani Abu Omar al-Hadithi
Media Abu Maysara al-Iraqi Abu Muhammad al-Mashhadani

Abu Abdullah al-Jiburi/Ahmad al-Ta’i

 Abu Muhammad al-Adnani

Abu al-Athir al-Absi/Bandar Sha’alan/Dr. Wa’el al-Rawi
Security Abu Muhammad al-Lubnani Abu Ahmad al-Badri [Syria]

Abu Omar al-Turkomani [Iraq then general]

 Abu Muhannad al-Suwaydawi

Abu Ali al-Anbari

Iyad al-Jumaili
Shura Council Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi Abu Abdullah al-Baghdadi

Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Ansari

 Abu Arkan al-Ameri Abu Bakr al-Khatouni

Translation of Text by Abu al-Waleed al-Salafi

-Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is not a person of random pulse but rather has attained knowledge that his peers could not enjoy since he has known well the schools of Sufi thought and the Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] and he was a jihadi before the fall of Baghdad originally.

-Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has an attractive charisma and a calm composure that is impossible to compare, for you find him speaking in high quality language, attractive calmness and the tone of the one victorious even in the harshest circumstances.

– Psychological analysis of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s personality points to a truth not accepting debate: and it is that he is a personality that does not speak frivolously, but rather he is a man who does not speak a word unless he implements it.

Abu Muhammad al-Adnani “seeks to inspire zeal in the soul.”

– I have analysed the speeches of Baghdadi and Adnani psychologically more than once, and I found a result: that Adnani’s speech seeks to inspire zeal in the soul, while Baghdadi’s speech seeks to inspire calm.

– Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, despite the fact that he studied at the hand of the Ikhwan and the Maturidis in university, apart from the fact that he took their thoughts to benefit from them, but he was very different from them in ideology.

– Baghdadi was known for his firmness in the field of da’wa since the days of the Ba’ath in Iraq, and this personality of his enabled him to be a Shari’i official. Then he gradually moved up the ranks till he reached the leadership.

– Baghdadi did not suddenly attain the leadership or in the darkness of oppression, as some journalists narrate, but rather he gradually moved up in a number of positions until he reached the leadership, and this is a well-known matter.

– Baghdadi got involved in jihadi formations since the fall of Baghdad in 2003, and it is not as some reports relate that he was far from the field.

– Baghdadi was a student of Shari’i knowledge, and he combined academic study in university with study at the hands of the mashaykh, and he was outstanding in study of the Qur’an.

Mugshot of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 2004.

– Baghdadi was from Jaysh Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jama’at, then [late 2006] he became a Shari’i official in the Dawlat al-Iraq [Islamic State of Iraq], then courier official, then an official of the Shari’i committees, then subsequently amir of the Dawla.

– Baghdadi sought ‘Ilm [Islamic knowledge] at the hands of mashaykh from many schools of thought, and this was a cause in the formation of his personality, as he sought ‘Ilm at the hands of Abu Abdullah al-Mansur, the amir of Jaysh al-Mujahideen [cf. here]

– Before the fall of Baghdad, Baghdadi had an Islamist direction that no one could condemn, but rather he was given the nickname by those who know him as “The Believer,” not to mention his status as a preacher in one of the mosques of Baghdad.

– Baghdadi operated in the ranks of ‘Ansar al-Tawheed’, one of the formations of Jaysh al-Mujahideen, while Baghdadi’s sister married the amir of this faction [c. 2005]

– Baghdadi entered prison in 2004, and he was imprisoned in Bucca in Basra, south of Iraq. And his entry into prison was a new point in his life that drew up his future subsequently.

– Baghdadi’s charisma made him qualified to be a person of importance inside the prison, for he was the side that would resolve disputes between adversaries, just as he would guide them in prayer.

– Baghdadi’s personality made the situation suitable for there to be a type of connection between military officers and Shari’i leaders in al-Qa’ida, especially after the repentance of these officers from the Ba’ath. READ MUCH MORE HERE.

What is YOUR Profile? Ask Google and Facebook

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You have been profiled, but is it accurate? You have been sold and sold out.

Scary New Ways the Internet Profiles You

Morrison/DailyBeast: Facebook, Google, and the other Internet titans have ever more sophisticated and intrusive methods of mining your data, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The success of the consumer Internet can be attributed to a simple grand bargain. We’ve been encouraged to search the web, share our lives with friends, and take advantage of all sorts of other free services. In exchange, the Internet titans that provide these services, as well as hundreds of other lesser-known firms, have meticulously tracked our every move in order to bombard us with targeted advertising. Now, this grand bargain is being tested by new attitudes and technologies.

Consumers who were not long ago blithely dismissive of privacy issues are increasingly feeling that they’ve lost control over their personal information. Meanwhile, Internet companies, adtech firms, and data brokers continue to roll out new technologies to build ever more granular profiles of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of consumers. And with next generation of artificial intelligence poised to exploit our data in ways we can’t even imagine, the simple terms of the old agreement seem woefully inadequate.

In the early days of the Internet, we were led to believe that all this data would deliver us to a state of information nirvana. We were going to get new tools and better communications, access to all the information we could possibly need, and ads we actually wanted to receive. Who could possibly argue with that?

For a while, the predictions seemed to be coming true. But then privacy goalposts were (repeatedly) moved, companies were caught (accidentally) snooping on us, and hackers showed us just how easy it is to steal our personal information. Advertisers weren’t thrilled either, particularly when we adopted mobile phones and tablets. That’s because the cookies that track us on our computers don’t work very well on mobile devices. And with our online activity split among our various devices, each of us suddenly appeared to be two or three different people.

This wasn’t a bad thing for consumers, because mobile phones emit data that enable companies to learn new things about us, such as where we go, who we meet, places we shop, and other habits that help them recognize and then predict our long-term patterns.

But now, new cross-device technologies are enabling the advertising industry to combine all our information streams into a single comprehensive profile by linking each of us to our desktop, mobile phone, and iPad. Throw in wearable devices like a Fitbit, connected TVs, and the Internet of Things, and the concept of cross-device tracking expands to potentially include anything that gives off a signal.

The ad industry is drooling over this technology because it can follow and target us as we move through our daily routines, whether we are searching on our desktop, surfing on our iPad, or out on the town with our phone in hand.

There are two methods to track people across devices. The more precise technique is deterministic tracking, which links devices to a single user when that person logs into the same site from a desktop computer, phone, and tablet. This is the approach used by Internet giants like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple, all of which have enormous user bases that log into their mobile and desktop properties.

A quick glance at Facebook’s data privacy policy shows it records just about everything we do, including the content we provide, who we communicate with, what we look at on its pages, as well as information about us that our friends provide. Facebook saves payment information, details about the devices we use, location info, and connection details. The social network also knows when we visit third-party sites that use its services (such as the Like button, Facebook Log In, or the company’s measurement and advertising services). It also collects information about us from its partners.

Most of the tech giants have similar policies and they all emphasize that they do not share personally identifiable information with third parties. Facebook, for example, uses our data to deliver ads within its walled garden but says it does not let outsiders export our information. Google says it only shares aggregated sets of anonymized data.

Little-known companies—primarily advertising networks and adtech firms like Tapad and Drawbridge—are also watching us. We will never log into their websites, so they use probabilistic tracking techniques to link us to our devices. They start by embedding digital tags or pixels into the millions of websites we visit so they can identify our devices, monitor our browsing habits, look for time-based patterns, as well as other metrics. By churning massive amounts of this data through statistical models, tracking companies can discern patterns and make predictions about who is using which device. Proponents claim they are accurate more than 90 percent of the time, but none of this is visible to us and is thus very difficult to control.

In recent comments to the Federal Trade Commission, the Center for Democracy and Technology illustrated just how invasive cross-device tracking technology could be. Suppose a user searched for sexually transmitted disease (STD) symptoms on her personal computer, used a phone to look up directions to a Planned Parenthood clinic, visited a pharmacy, and then returned home. With this kind of cross-device tracking, it would be easy to infer that the user was treated for an STD.

That’s creepy enough, but consider this: by using the GPS or WiFi information generated by the patient’s mobile phone, it would not be difficult to discover her address. And by merging her online profile with offline information from a third-party data broker, it would be fairly simple to identify the patient.

So, should we be concerned that companies use cross-device tracking to compile more comprehensive profiles of us? Let us count the reasons:

Your data could be hacked: Privacy Rights Clearinghouse reports that in 2015 alone, hackers gained access to the records of 4.5 million patients at UCLA Health System, 37 million clients of online cheating website Ashley Madison, 15 million Experian accounts, 80 million Anthem customers, as well as more than 21 million individuals in the federal Office of Personnel Management’s security clearance database. And these were just the headliners that garnered media attention. No site or network is entirely safe and numerous researchers have already demonstrated how incredibly easy it is to “reidentify” or “deanonymize” individuals hidden in anonymized data.

Your profile could be sold: In fact, it typically is, in anonymized fashion. That’s the whole point. But in many cases, Internet companies’ privacy policies also make it clear our profiles are assets to be bought and sold should the company change ownership. This was the case when Verizon bought AOL and merged their advertising efforts, creating much more detailed profiles of their combined user base. Yahoo might be next should it decide to spin off its Internet properties.

Your data could be used in ways you did not anticipate: Google, Facebook, and other companies create customized web experiences based on our interests, behavior, and even our social circles. On one level, this makes perfect sense because none of us want to scroll through reams of irrelevant search results, news stories, or social media updates. But researchers have demonstrated that our online profiles also have real world consequences, including the prices we pay for products, the amount of credit extended to us, and even the job offers we may receive.

Our data is already used to build and test advanced analytics models for new services and features. There is much more to come. The Googles and the Facebooks of the Internet boast that newly emerging artificial intelligence will enable them to analyze greater amounts of our data to discern new behavioral patterns and to predict what we will think and want before we actually think and want it. These companies have only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible with our data.

We are being profiled in incredible and increasingly detailed ways, and our data may be exploited for purposes we cannot yet possibly understand. The old bargain—free Internet services in exchange for targeted advertising—is rapidly become a quaint relic of the past. And with no sense of how, when, or why our data might be used in the future, it is not clear what might take its place.