No you don't, that's not how laws work, if you want society to look the way you want you need to actively work for it, you can't delegate that process to a law. It's not how participation in a free society works

Permanently stopping those proposals wouldn't necessarily eliminate illegal, back-door mass government surveillance, nor would it eliminate private sector mass surveillance (think social media) which then gets accessed by the government (whether legally or not).

Fighting corruption only works when enough people fight it at enough levels, and continue to fight it. There is no getting around the fact that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

> We (privacy advocates) have to constantly fight and win over and over again.

We do have a way to reinforce our position, though!

We can design and consume technology that makes this hard.

We can stop working for companies that build centralized platforms for messaging.

We can teach our neighbors how important rights to privacy and speech are in language that they understand.

There can be enough friction that this becomes harder for politicians. Remember the Reddit Sopa and Pipa protests? - that was pretty epic! I don't think Reddit will help us in its current state, but we can absolutely mount those defenses on Wikipedia, Mastodon, Bluesky, and others.

And we should continue to move off of platforms that don't align with our freedoms. And build our platforms in a way that encourages "normies" to join.

Yes to all of the above! I just want to whine a bit that every time I try to educate anybody about this, I am promised a tin foil hat in return (even from Software Engineers!).

tin foil hat doesn't work - you still hear incoming Frey effected radio transmissions

The tinfoil hat treatment is due to the fact that these days everything that fits the mould of a conspiracy theory is dismissed simply for fitting the mould of a conspiracy theory. In the same time as this cultural headspace was being cultivated in the US:

A billionaire pedophile ran a covert sex ring with a suspected who's who of a client list who was almost barely prosecuted for "reasons™"

Social media companies caught red-handed psychologically manipulating users for various ends

Damn near everyone helping to destroy actual free speech and privacy willingly because they've been talked into it (ironic)

Governments that engage in mass surveillance so egregious if you had tried it 40 years ago there would have been an uprising. Aided by the tech community I might add.

Industries that abuse data and algorithms to manipulate pricing or commit outright fraud.

A pharma corp addicting countless americans to opioids with almost no real consequence, killing hundreds of thousands and ruining millions of families.

Several industries have poisoned the planet and its inhabitants in various long term ways for profit.

And yet if you suggest something is a conspiracy it is dismissed as the ravings of a lunatic. Speaking of conspiracies that doesn't sound like an accident... The trick to conspiracy theories is critical thinking and not uncritical dismissal.

If I have any words of consolation: when the "conspiracy theory" turns out to be more practice than theory you get to say I told you so.

Edit: typo

This is just lifestylist nonsense to make yourself feel better than everyone else. If you design technology to make this hard, they will hit you with a stick, and find everyone who uses your technology and hit them with a stick. If you still do it, they will hit you all with the sticks until you are dead, and also hit your family and friends with sticks. If you don't work for them, they'll find a bro who will. Teaching your neighbors just makes them another potential victim, and they will report you or curse you as they die with you. Moving off platforms when there are no alternatives just means you won't be able to bank, or file your taxes. And if you fail to file your taxes, they will hit you with a stick.

The cage is real, it's not a state of mind. It's not something that can be recycled out of. You'll know when you're really doing something when you can give people a time and a place to show up; when that showing up isn't to stand in the street and socialize with each other, burn down a Starbucks, or spit in the face of a cop who makes less than you do; and when most of you end up dead or in prison.

I always reply like this, but some people think everybody else in the world is so weak and naïve, when they themselves aren't doing anything important and have not taken a fraction of the risks or suffered a fraction of the loss of the people they're asking to speak up. Speaking against power is an impotent magic spell. You can recognize journalists who speak against real power by their deaths.

Everybody is just aping the US black civil rights struggle, where watching the violence done in their name to nicely dressed, well-behaved people filled enough people with disgust that politicians wouldn't get a boost from continuing to support it. That was how a small minority population faced with irrational restrictions in a media-saturated society was able to barely overcome explicitly unfair laws (and go no further, we're still the underclass, we're still dying.)

The history of effective, revolutionary, positive protest by what are often majorities involved people getting out into the streets as a show of strength, not a show of weakness. It always involves converting and including portions of the army and the police forces. It involves building strong shadow governments. Not this pantomime where everybody pretends to be black, and the people who are the blackest, weakest, most undeserving of their treatment win because mommy parliament or daddy supreme court are moved enough to declare them the winner.

Username checks out.