Contact tracing is actually a perfect example. Early in the pandemic the tech companies came together to create a privacy preserving bluetooth exposure notific

Contact tracing is actually a perfect example. Early in the pandemic the tech companies came together to create a privacy preserving bluetooth exposure notification system that relied on phones and a clever design to prevent this kind of tracking panopticon you describe. See: https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact-tracing/pdf/ExposureNotification-BluetoothSpecificationv1.2.pdf https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/cu... The HN response was ignorant and loudly knee-jerk without understanding how any of this worked. It was stuff like this that caused this to fail to get adopted (see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25629304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25629304 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957763). This is partly why I ignore HN on topics like this. Instead, we ended up with governments just doing it via data brokers and other types of way more invasive tracking. Our response to encryption policy like Apple's that doesn't decrease privacy could lead to a similarly bad outcome.