Though I wish it were different, I can't help but feel that this truly is game over. The statists have won. The technology is too powerful, they're too easily able to afford it, and the public can't do much to stop it
It's sad to see such defeat. The tech is not too powerful, the public just has to care about privacy, that's all. We have the technology to prevent mass surveillance. We can stop it, as soon as we the people want to.
I wish this were true. When you use technology to prevent mass survaillance, they criminalize its usage.
Anyone can be thrown in jail at any time for relatively petty reasons, and you can be physically surveilled by detectives on mere suspicion. It isn't pretty, but it's the truth.
Sure most of us will be fine with basic precautions but 20 years from now is a different story? I prefer not to think about it
It is true; we have tunneling, VPNs, ssh, Tor, FreeNet, I2P. None of these things have been criminalized, so what are you thinking about when you say "its" usage has been criminalized? Do you have some examples of when privacy tech has been criminalized in the past? I might be naive, it probably has happened, but I don't personally know of any privacy or security software or hardware that is illegal to use in the US.
People being physically surveilled doesn't land in the same camp as mass digital surveillance. It requires a warrant, even if they can be obtained for petty reasons. The government doesn't have the bandwidth for physical surveillance of everyone. It just isn't the same thing.
20 years from now is a long way off, long enough for us to make it better. If you give up and don't think about it, people who care and work for what they want will probably get what they want. Money and government power certainly do want to watch what you're doing, if they can get away with it. But if the public, on the whole, really truly started to care about privacy, enough to vote on the issue and enough to make purchasing decisions based on privacy concerns, it would get better. The only reason it's bleak right now is the majority of the world is still giddy about joining Facebook, rather than concerned about the implications of digital public over-sharing. Give it time and get your friends & family to care, and it's more likely to improve than not. If we all look the other way, then we get what we get...
