Comment by 2ndorderthought
1 day ago
You may not realize it but this isn't even about law enforcement. It's also about tech companies having the data. What they will do with it, who they will sell or leak it too.
It's about the amount of data. It's about what it can be used for from military adjacent organizations under a fascist regime. Whether you think the us is headed toward fascism or not, what if it did? That's the point.
> this isn't even about law enforcement. It's also about tech companies having the data
One is a clear and present danger. The other is a hypothetical danger. Both deserve being addressed. But if only one is going to get political capital, it should be the first.
(I've worked on technology privacy issues. My takeaway is the public is broadly fine with the tradeoff. Folks in tech are not. But folks in tech with strong views on privacy are politically useless due to a combination of self-defeating laziness and nihilism.)
Hypothetical my ass. It's only hypothetical in the same way the Sword of Damocles could "hypothetically" kill someone. Every spook in the three-letter agencies has known this for decades, and now the lawful intercept weapon has been turned on them with Salt Typhoon. How anyone can call the threat "hypothetical" is beyond wishcasting and downright dishonest.
You cannot change the rules to fix this. You can only change your personal habits. I wish it wasn't like this, but none of those agencies can be held accountable by design.
Accountability is the prevailing missing ingredient in US society.
You may not realize it but this isn't even about law enforcement. It's also about tech companies having the data.
This. The lesson of the past decades is: if some organization has the data, eventually it becomes too attractive not to (ab)use it. Even Apple, which sold itself as a privacy-first company is slowly adding more and more ads. Squeezing out more profits is just too attractive with the pile of data that they are sitting on. Similarly, bad governments will require access to the data if they can.
Employees inside companies should push back collection of data as much as possible (the GDPR helps a lot in Europe). If you do not have the data, you cannot use it in a user hostile-way in the future and governments cannot request data that you do not have. If you have to store data, go for end-to-end encryption.
Citizens should try to escape the Apple/Google duopoly (e.g. by installing GrapheneOS), block trackers, and only install the necessary apps (no app = no easy tracking). For apps that you do need, revoke as many sandbox privileges as possible.