JoeFan,
(1) Good question. Not sure. Companies like Google own the website and servers that we are using. They using search and traffic data to better tailor adverstisements and product offerings to consumers, so that is providing some benefit to us. Their map software gives us benefit but to do that it has to track location.
If Google has no way to make money off the search engine and map, they go away. The whole company goes away. Unless we as consumers are willing to pay a fee for specific services. But will enough people be willing to do that? Of course other search engines like Duckduckgo, which I use, promise not to save any of your data. Not sure if they are making money or not.
It would be good to have rules for data where, there are more direct requests for your approval to collect, save, and sell. That is step 1. It gives people a choice. Step 1b could be to outlaw the selling of user data to outside firms. Not sure if I like that idea or not.
Step 2 could be to have tech companies delete data after a certain amount of time. I have no idea what the reasonable amount would be. A day? A week? A year? I have no sense for what is appropriate.
Not sure who would decide what the guidelines are and how they would be enforced. I don't like the idea of the government doing. But that is one way. I prefer there to be competitors who truly value user privacy and build business models where they can provide services without selling personal data. Then there are true market options where users get to choose what services they get at what price.
I think the most important for me is that the government has no access to use data including phones. This will upset law enforcement. But I don't really trust the FBI or even many PDs. We all see from the Trump situation how the FISC has been corrupted. It can't be trusted. If it is illegal for companies to sell personal data to ANY governments, I'm not sure I care what else they do with it.
(2) What can anyone do about something that has already happened? We can't go back in time. The Chinese government stole technology and is using it to oppress their people. My main concern is that no more governments do that.
In terms of what do we do moving forward? There has to be international criticism for IP theft and oppression of minorities. It has to be loud, public, consistent, and voiced by many countries. There also needs to be a way for companies to police theft with legal punishments; heavy fines, jail, deportation, etc. The legal punishments need to go all the way to those who are receiving the data. You could tie immigration and trade to the # and severity of these infractions. For the trade aspect, I would want to be very careful to do it in a way that mitigates the harm to American citizens.
The best way to do that is to start developing trade with the countries along the Indian and South West Pacific Oceans (from India to Indonesia) and Africa. Reducing trade with China can only happen without harm to Americans if trade is increasing everywhere else.