> It has become really hard to figure out what to believe and what not.
This. Thankfully it is also becoming obvious to more people the necessity of end to end encryption and open source software. Then - depending on the level of paranoia - we would only need to deal with the encryption tech.
Back when I was 16, playing Shadowrun, we used to say that paranoia was not a disease, but a survival strategy.
There are moments when I get close to freaking out about it. I am currently reading Gravity's Rainbow, and now, for the first time, I get the paranoia in that book, I feel it. It is even less pleasant than I had imagined.
And even with FLOSS and the best encryption technically possible, we have to ask ourselves, what does it lead to?
In a society where the state no longer trusts the citizens, where citizens need to use military-grade encryption to keep the intelligence services from accidentally flagging them as potential terrorists because they have a gross sense of humor or a weird hobby, the very fabric that holds society together begins to erode.
If we go down this road, we will become even more estranged and isolated than we are now.
This. Thankfully it is also becoming obvious to more people the necessity of end to end encryption and open source software. Then - depending on the level of paranoia - we would only need to deal with the encryption tech.