Comment by grafmax
1 month ago
The reason is our government and regulators are captured by business concerns which profit from our data. The government in turn views mass surveillance as a powerful tool for social control. Although there are many more people whose privacy is violated by these policies than benefit from them, the rich and powerful minority is more organized in its efforts and thus comes out ahead in the balance of power.
> the rich and powerful minority is more organized
They show up. I've worked on privacy legislation at the state and local level. Barely anybody calls or writes in support. That means barely anybody would turn up to a contested primary election over it, or donate to a challenger, or organise the foregoing en masse. Contrast that with bread-and-butter or activist issues, where it's immediately clear there is political capital at the very least on the board.
Or the people elected by other humans could... IDK do their job of representing the people rather than a handful of corporations.
The problem is what I said in other comnents here. This is the fabel of sodom and gomorrah in action. We have no people with any moral compass in charge.
> do their job of representing the people rather than a handful of corporations
There is no incentive to represent the civically disengaged. Particularly on niche issues like privacy.
> We have no people with any moral compass in charge
No system works if reliant on wishing up on a star that people were better. We have a lot of problems with our republic's design. None of them can address problems people don't care to involve themselves in respect of.
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> They show up. I've worked on privacy legislation at the state and local level. Barely anybody calls or writes in support.
This is by design. A lot of people talk about RTO in regards to business real estate but there's also the aspect of keeping people so busy and exhausted that they don't show up when it matters.
> there's also the aspect of keeping people so busy and exhausted that they don't show up when it matters
This would make sense if people didn’t show up for anything. They do. Including very overworked folks.
The unfortunate truth is the people most interested in privacy overlap significantly with the politically nihilistic and lazy. They’ve never called their elected or shown up to a town hall and, moreover, never will, because of course it’s useless.
This is a wild claim. Do you have any evidence at all for this?