Not necessarily directed at the parent comment (who seems more at a loss than thinking it's a solution), but calling for laws and regulations to restrain a state that regularly ignores laws and regulations already on the books feels very lazy (slacktivism?) to me, and is all too common a trope on HN. Call me pessimistic but I really don't think that the kind of elites that will use illegal metadata to drone strike their own citizens and their children (among numerous other atrocities) will suddenly behave if we just put a few more of 'The Right Laws and Regulations'™ in this time.

The only answer to the privacy and security question is to be principled enough to do what you can to opt out even if it's difficult. Yes I get it, you don't want to alienate some percentage of your social circle/users/customers. But that attitude contributed to how we got here in the first place. You may be pleasantly surprised how many people will be willing to follow along if you ask them directly and are willing to help them do it. I thanked a friend for getting set up on matrix after I deleted all my other services and he told me "even though I still use whatsapp you have a good reason not to and you know more about this stuff than I do so I'm happy to use element to chat with you". I haven't had a friend that I made a personal appeal to turn me down yet. "I'll create your user on my server. It's nobody's but ours and it runs from my living room" goes a long way, apparently.

My personal roadmap (ymmv):

- Use tech that makes your adversaries job harder. For me this is things like no JavaScript (plain pages in general), FOSS/OSHW, walled gardens, cash/cryptonumismatics, mirror things on RSS/yggdrasil/gemini/alternate dns roots/ipfs. Self host. You get the idea.

- Help others do the same. Cultivate a community. Make topical group chats/forums/pages. Mirror the content of things you would like to see.

- Make your employers do the same, and be willing to say no to things that are counter productive to that goal.

- Regularly make your friends/coworkers/boss confront the idea that they do have something to hide. Ask them to hand you their phone and tell you their password, ask for naked pictures of them/their family, ask them to install a parental control app that gives you their location/microphone/browsing history/etc, ask if you can put some cameras in their house/bedroom/bathroom (bonus points if you bring a camera over).

- Obviously tailor the above to the situation and remind them that they do in fact want privacy. Don't ask a co-worker for naked pictures what is wrong with you?

- People are wrongfully arrested on a regular basis based on minimal evidence. Amplify their stories.

- Rotate usernames regularly.

Anyway that's what I do. It hasn't been nearly as rough of an experience as I thought it would be. Thanks for hearing me out. Welcome to the panopticon, friends.