Sometimes I think, I have learned a lot about this issue and I’m well aware of the fact the whole world is going towards a state of surveillance that no one can escape, I have done everything I could to ensure my personal privacy, but what about others?
the majority of the world population does not even care about this matter, and they might even see it as a normality, the people might even know that they are being watched/listened to/surveilled, and they don’t do anything to prevent it neither individually or collectively.
I also believe that protecting the individual privacy automatically contributes to the collective privacy and vice-versa, but seeing how the world is heading towards extreme surveillance that is practically impossible to resist (eg… face recognition, chat control law), I ask, what is the point of all of this? how can i live peacfully knowing that i can be suspected of anything just because i made a joke here or said something there?
and I’m not talking 100% privacy or anonymity, i’m just talking peace of mind and well-being.
how can i live peacfully knowing that i can be suspected of anything just because i made a joke here or said something there?
You’ve never been able to say things publicly (or, since the internet, publish something that the entire world can read) and expect to be shielded from the consequences. There is always a risk that comes with speaking freely, especially if powerful people perceive your words as a challenge to their power.
The erosion of privacy protections is a reason to despair, but it is also a reason to speak more.
I wasn’t talking about saying things publicly, i was pointing towards the fact that even private conversations would be surveilled, hence, any joke or discussion made would be question to suspicion without intended targeting.
You asked how can you live peacefully knowing that your words might be used against you. I don’t believe you can, and I also don’t believe you ever truly could. But I also don’t believe that is a reason to self-censor.
We should be able to have privacy without labouring at it.
We shouldn’t be excluded from normal society by being private. e.g. I should be able to.hire a plumber without using Meta software.
I’ve definitely hired a plumber without using Meta
It is kinda like the routine surveillance flights that the FBI is doing over every major American city. People know, freak out for a week or two and then they just start to forget that it is happening.
The endless stream of good reasons for people to embrace privacy, just can’t compete with their addiction to the race to the bottom of their brain stem social media platforms that are profiting off their addiction and bubble creation.
We are a distracted society stumbling towards suicide by climate change and the rise of fascism due to the decline of Capitalism.
Giving your point, what concerns me even more is the complete decline of cultural diversity, people are just the same, whether they live east/west/south/north of the globe, digital globalization is killing diversity and leaves no room for cultural exchange, we often forget that we are the story, and if we are not able to tell our story, someone will come and tell it, using their own version of it, which might not even align to the original one, and if we try claim the story, it’s already too late, we have seen it happening and it will continue to happen all over the world.
and this is absolutely applicable to privacy, the next generations will grow up in a society where surveillance is the normality and privacy is something of the past.
imo cultural diversity is still strong. Even within EU there are a lot of differences. Cash vs card, covid vacciness, lots of examples.
