[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_in_the_Russian_...

This is an important point.

The Bush admin established systems to surveil ~everyone in the US (not suspected of a crime) in bulk. Bulk surveillance is the well known, core component of systems intended to harm people (in bulk).

This got a pass from Bush supporters (inc me at first). It got little-to-no strong pushback elsewhere.

The Obama admin massively expanded Bush era surveillance systems. This got a pass from nearly everyone (excepting a period after the Edward Snowden revelations).

Not holding a reasonable PotUS accountable - this gifts power to the unreasonable ones that follow.

Also note that the IRS and Social Security data is protected and access is a serious crime. So the responsible Feds are long fired or resigned.

In reality "evil" people almost always want to genuinely make the world a better place, and they are fighting "ignorant" people who are dragging society down by not conforming to their golden vision. And then "evil" becomes largely a function of who you ask. It's the opposition that labels them evil, not society on the whole.

There are very few leaders ever who are straight up storybook style evil. Almost all of them were/are deranged people who convinced enough people of their ostensibly good vision to begin executing it.

No one came to power because they wanted to turn society into burning rumble while they ate babies during daily random execution time. It's all nuance and complication.

The world, at the highest levels of competition and leadership, doesn't run on morals, it runs on unscrupulous force, conquest and domination. See: the human history for the past infinity years. Those who tried to maintain peace on morals instead of force, got eliminated form the gene pool. People should remember this more often.

Do you really think Putin, Xi and Khamenei are better stewards of the world than the West?

The West's introspective nature is good and all, but sometimes we unwittingly forget that there is actual evil in the world, and it's much worse than saying mean things on Twitter, or putting facts above feelings.

Students in Iran literally die protesting the regime, meanwhile students here who live a life of luxury and don't know what actual oppression is "protest"/simp for the Iranians (or one of their various proxies)...

This administration is, as with everything else, discarding the "norms" based restraint that previously applied to their use.

Did you mean PRISM? When I think of Proton, I think of a genuine effort to assist people in maintaining security.

“Lost in the noise” no more

The danger is when the fascists take charge and start abusing it.

And the new thing here is just that.

He was also proud of paying more for some kind of exclusive license to the data, that Floc wasn't going to sell his surveillance data to other entities. I never really believed that.

I'm not sure if you consider governments and police to be private actors?

I spoke with a sophisticated ANPR city-wide tracking vendor recently at a conference. From their video showing the system following vehicles in real-time, with detailed movement tracking, speed measurement, lane position, estimating model, age, demographic etc. when they couldn't see the registration plate, from all sorts of vantage points, it looked to me like they would know where basically everyone who drives is at all times as they moved around.

So, as a privacy advocate, I asked them about tracking and knowing where every driver is all the time, and they assured me: "It's ok. We send all this data immediatel;y to the police. The police are responsible for keeping the data safe. They only use it when they decide it's appropriate."

I was there interested in privacy and traffic monitoring, but there was almost nobody to speak with who seemed to think about privacy, except in a checkbox sort of way, e.g. "when you're in public there's no legal right to privacy" and "our systems are fully compliant with data protection".

I was taught many, many times growing up in the U.S. that people had a right to privacy, to free speech, to being considered innocent until proven guilty.

When governmental organizations police the speech of individuals for things that are critical of the regime, we lose our right to free speech.

When they download the contents of your phone when you travel, you lose the right to privacy.

When people are denied a writ of habeas corpus, when they are trafficked to countries that are not from and have never been to, we are considered guilty unless we have people "on the outside" who are capable of fighting for our return.

They aren't even trying to make an argument for this, outside of the cult of personality of the current regime, the belief that He can do no wrong. If you "both-sides" this you allow the trends to continue.

I'm curious to hear this argument. When I'm walking around a city, I'm in public as well. But I don't have to tell everybody who I am, and I would find facial recognition cameras spread around the city as a privacy violation.

I've been thinking a lot about this same thing. I've seen a marked rise in the number of complaints about how "everyone in law enforcement is MAGA" and the like, and can't help but think: "this is what you wanted, right?"

There have been a lot of people trying really hard to make law enforcement (and adjacent roles) entirely unpalatable, and it appears they've been largely successful! I think what they failed to take into account is that they were only making those roles unpalatable tothose who already think like them in other ways, and forgot that there are a lot of people out there with fundamentally different beliefs who are not dissuaded by ACAB-adjacent arguments. Or, worse yet, are actively attracted to the way the role is being portrayed!

So in the end, it seems like they achieved their goals, but perhaps overlooked how those goals might have some unintended consequences.

I never really understood the argument, either. If you think policing is rife with prejudice and abuse of power, why are you trying to demonize the whole job? Why wouldn't you be signing up for it, instead? After all, if you think it's being done wrong, the best way to right that wrong is by doing it yourself and setting a better example.

I think the fact that people prefer to publicly demonize an entire thing, instead of doing the hard work of making it right, is one of the most insidious features of modern social media.