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There was a time I would have agreed abuses like these would end badly, but after seeing the effects of the Snowden and Wikileaks revelations about how nihilist

There was a time I would have agreed abuses like these would end badly, but after seeing the effects of the Snowden and Wikileaks revelations about how nihilistic and evil our institutions can be, I doubt the reaction to these or other surveillance realities will come to much. The main effect of those disclosures was a rise in populism, but even with the loss of the White House for a term, it had no lasting impact and that populist reaction has been effectively quashed. If you want to effect change, get in earlier when it's still just the crazy fringe talking about it, like 25 years ago, or 25 years from now, and maybe you can steer the course away from the next one.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> There was a time I would have agreed abuses like these would end badly, but after seeing the effects of the Snowden and Wikileaks revelations about how nihilistic and evil our institutions can be, I doubt the reaction to these or other surveillance realities will come to much. A lot happened in a very short time after the Snowden revelations. HTTPS became expected and Let's encrypt launched. Data providers started encrypting backbone traffic in earnest. Countries that had long condoned US Gov surveillance - or were largely compliant/complicit - began to push back. Did that momentum wind down? Yes. When did it wind down? When most major news orgs lost most of their interest. Snowden dragged the press into reporting on surveillance abuses. Eventually that pressure eased and major news orgs went back to doing what they did before - giving most surveillance abuse a pass. And here we are. The only way this gets better is if the press gives a crap in a meaningful way. Otherwise, invasive snooping will continue expanding into every nook+cranny of our lives. The same way US political corruption became normalized after decades of underreporting, surveillance will become equally entrenched - and for most of the same reasons.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  > A lot happened in a very short time after the Snowden revelations. HTTPS became expected and Let's encrypt launched And yet the proliferation of the attention economy and "growth & engagement" means that in practice, you no longer need to care about breaking HTTPS if you can just tap the analytics/marketing/adtech providers and can get data from 90% of the internet since these trackers litter pretty much every single webpage nowadays. As a bonus, you don't even need to fund or maintain the interception infrastructure, since the adtech provider is doing that for you for free.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > you no longer need to care about breaking HTTPS if you can just tap the analytics/marketing/adtech providers Right. It's why the LEO's "Going Dark" FUD was complete and utter crap. LEO has more info on us than at any time in history. However, none of that negates how real progress followed Snowden and that bad actors lost their forward momentum. At least until the press lost interest and then bad actors resumed their progress against us. News orgs not caring is 98% of how we got here. As far as we let press off the hook, we're earning what we get.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> There was a time I would have agreed abuses like these would end badly, but after seeing the effects of the Snowden and Wikileaks revelations about how nihilistic and evil our institutions can be, I doubt the reaction to these or other surveillance realities will come to much. A lot happened in a very short time after the Snowden revelations. HTTPS became expected and Let's encrypt launched. Data providers started encrypting backbone traffic in earnest. Countries that had long condoned US Gov surveillance - or were largely compliant/complicit - began to push back. Did that momentum wind down? Yes. When did it wind down? When most major news orgs lost most of their interest. Snowden dragged the press into reporting on surveillance abuses. Eventually that pressure eased and major news orgs went back to doing what they did before - giving most surveillance abuse a pass. And here we are. The only way this gets better is if the press gives a crap in a meaningful way. Otherwise, invasive snooping will continue expanding into every nook+cranny of our lives. The same way US political corruption became normalized after decades of underreporting, surveillance will become equally entrenched - and for most of the same reasons.

Nextgrid 3y ago
> A lot happened in a very short time after the Snowden revelations. HTTPS became expected and Let's encrypt launched And yet the proliferation of the attention economy and "growth & engagement" means that in practice, you no longer need to care about breaking HTTPS if you can just tap the analytics/marketing/adtech providers and can get data from 90% of the internet since these trackers litter pretty much every single webpage nowadays. As a bonus, you don't even need to fund or maintain the interception infrastructure, since the adtech provider is doing that for you for free.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > you no longer need to care about breaking HTTPS if you can just tap the analytics/marketing/adtech providers Right. It's why the LEO's "Going Dark" FUD was complete and utter crap. LEO has more info on us than at any time in history. However, none of that negates how real progress followed Snowden and that bad actors lost their forward momentum. At least until the press lost interest and then bad actors resumed their progress against us. News orgs not caring is 98% of how we got here. As far as we let press off the hook, we're earning what we get.