In Big Tech’s latest usurpation of personal privacy, Google admitted this week that they’ve been secretly vacuuming up the detailed health records of at least 50 million Americans in 21 states.

This was not a voluntary confession. It wasn’t until Monday, after the Wall Street Journal broke the story, that Google issued a typically infuriating statement.

“We understand that people want to ask questions,” it read in part.

How benevolent.

The Orwellian translation: We who rule Silicon Valley are exercising control over everyone, everywhere, in ways you don’t know, wouldn’t understand and can’t do anything about — and who’s going to stop us?

It’s certainly not the federal government, which long ago sold out to Big Tech. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook have spent more than half a billion dollars lobbying Congress from 2005 to 2018.

And these companies pay next to nothing in federal taxes; in 2018, Amazon paid $0 on $11 billion.

It’s not enough, apparently, that Big Tech listens to our private conversations, knows exactly where we live, what our IQs and annual incomes are, targets ads to babies and toddlers, knows who our family and friends are, who our ancestors were, whether we share DNA with a known felon, how fast we’re driving or walking, if we have pets and what kind, if we’re going to get a divorce or quit our jobs — or allows foreign governments to meddle in our presidential elections and says, plainly, they don’t really plan to stop it from happening again.

Yet this feels different somehow, even more sinister. With “Project Nightingale,” as Google calls it, Big Tech is moving not just towards complete domination of humanity but what it is to be human itself. Google is now in the business of virtual body-snatching without informing the hosts. How will they have their way with us?

So alarming are Google’s aims that several employees at Ascension, a 2,600-site chain of hospitals, seem to have leaked the story. “Some . . . have raised questions about the way data is being collected and shared, both from a technological and ethical perspective,” said the Journal.

None of the data is anonymized. All records include patient names, dates of birth, and complete medical histories. None of the patients have been told Google has their information. Neither have their doctors.

What about HIPAA? Surely this must be a violation of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, right?

After all, if you Google the question, “Who can access my health care records?,” the top answer, courtesy of the Department of Health and Human Services, insists, “Only you or your personal representative has the right to access your records.”

It adds, “A health-care provider or health plan may send copies of your records to another provider or health plan only as needed for treatment or payment or with your permission.”

Sounds straightforward, but that doesn’t matter. Apparently it’s legal, since Ascension is sharing this information with other partners in health care — in this case, elastic as it sounds, Google.

That doesn’t make Project Nightingale ethical, or any less of an existential threat. If Google goes untrammeled here, the near future includes anonymous Silicon Valley junior employees with no medical license making life-or-death decisions.

How this is not an issue brought up in every presidential debate is beyond me. Because the day is soon coming that the president of the United States is no longer the most powerful person on Earth — if that day is not already here.