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> If the government going to use tax dollars to collect all my data. They might as well turn it into a searchable service: "I know I email bob 20 years ago, I wish I could find that recipe I gave him". Maybe, they could email me with helpful things like "Y% of people in your area who google'd X, Y and Z had prostate cancer. You should talk to your doctor".

Yeah, exactly this!! If you must know all my financial transactions, can't you at least do my taxes for me? If you already know who I am all the time, why do I need like three forms of ID to get a updated driver's license? If you can track all the phones, do you really need to ask for name and phone number when I call 911?

It's just bizarre how much data they collect and then... ignore? It didn't catch terrorists, it didn't stop the capitol storming, it doesn't stop school shootings... what exactly do they do with it all? It's like a pointless subsidy for hard drive manufacturers, where personal information goes to die.

At least Google provides useful services in exchange for all the tracking. Even Facebook has the decency to let you connect with people you might know, and help you remember what you did 10 years ago. If the government just offered useful services in exchange, millions would willingly surrender their privacy. Most of us just aren't very interesting.

This data is being collected. And stories about that are being leaked, so that people feel (slightly) watched. Nobody in any (halfway intelligent) government wants a Nazi like Gestapo or SS patrols.

They know that offensively acting against dissent would actually drive dissent. So they take a book out of Bentham's Panopticon [0] and translate it into modern society.

You know you are being watched. And you know that there is a possibility that the government can construct something out of all that data. And if there is no data about you that is even more suspicious.

So on a subliminal level the subduing effects are there. The status quo is being kept stable for the elites at least.

People listen to entertainment news, see the next villain that we are shown and are happy the government protected us from whatever danger is the new fad (either Chinese imports, Muslim terrorists, socialists or whatever floats their boat).

Media? Media is there to make money. Whatever drives advertising dollars wins.

This data collection is there to subdue society at large. Not stop any single crime. If there were no crime/school shooting/act of terrorism nobody would buy the next surveillance bill and re-elect our masters.

/s

It's really tough, I think people care but most feel completely overwhelmed by the scope of it and have just become jaded. Every time I try bringing it up with a friend, they all say some version of "yeah I know, it's really messed up but I can't do anything about it."

I do think some of the blame lies with the media. In my lifetime they seem to have become little more than spokesmen for power. They're too scared to lose access to their meal ticket, the government sources who they regularly introduce in their reporting/propaganda with "according to government sources...", followed by some bit of strategically leaked information. It's increasingly rare for reporters to ask hard questions about much of anything, let alone pressing for answers or making a big stink about issues like this that actually matter. And when they do, the PR spokesman on the other end of the question just dodges it with a certain bullshit acuity that's rather horrifying.

> If the government going to use tax dollars to collect all my data.

The article also mentions "a defense agency buying consumer data from a third-party broker" which I somehow find even more odious, if that's possible!

Is it really the media's fault when they've reported at length about Snowden and Assange and Manning and in the end... nobody cared? Investigative journalism was THRIVING in the last few years. Trump, Kavanaugh, Epstein... can't even keep track of the scandals anymore. Did anyone care? Half the country kept voting red as before, the other half blue.

Nothing really changed, and nobody was held accountable for anything of note. The media has been reporting a LOT, people are just... outta fucks to give? It's like a mix of compassion fatigue and learned helplessness... not really sure what normal people can do when there's a class of people unaccountable to the law, the media, or anything really. Their cronies are all in business and government together, with no checks and balances. It's not the media's fault we have zero accountability for our elites.

>degradation of our civil liberties, rights...I've donated money to the EFF and ACLU

The tough part is that it's hard to find find organizations that still defend the core principles without caveats. The ACLU used to be a neutral defender of free speech, but now they seem to have lost that.

"The Times reports that at a recent ACLU event, “A law professor argued that the free-speech rights of the far right were not worthy of defense by the ACLU. … [And] an ACLU official said it was perfectly legitimate for his lawyers to decline to defend hate speech.”

Every organization seems to get more polarized and, with that, principles may get sidelined.

https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/558433-the-aclus-ci... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

They defended free speech when free speech, as a whole, served to advance their political goals, even if specific instances of it didn't (e.g. KKK rallies).

Now that their politics are the norm, the effects of free speech are less clear, and so is the ACLU's defense of it.

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Frank Herbert, Children of Dune