> The rest of you live in a vacuum fortified by paychecks and social support. It's all of us really. The enormous amount of money pumped into tech by the surve

> The rest of you live in a vacuum fortified by paychecks and social support. It's all of us really. The enormous amount of money pumped into tech by the surveillance state reaches nearly every software company (and beyond). Your examples for worthwhile projects are Tor, freenet, and crypto. The surveillance state finds those projects useful too. This problem is larger than what you're considering and blaming particular industries and spaces understates the amount of cash pumped into the world by governments. And just because corn farmers have a subsidized crop that drives the processed food industry which give us cancer/diabetes doesn't mean those farmers shouldn't follow best practices unless we want another dust bowl. Likewise, I think it's great that UI programmers are more aware of security. Also, we're not literally paying for the surveillance state. They're essentially stealing from the people by arbitrarily printing money which devalues our own. If taxes were raised commensurate with spending and debt, we'd certainly be making some more prudent decisions about how best to spend tax dollars.