everyone is already complaining about Privacy, many ways to by pass age verification that I see and know of. Like with piracy, many ways to still do it even if the governments don’t want people to do it. Many big tech companies are already be de accounted because of there intrusion on privacy. Sadly if you log onto the Internet, your privacy is not yours. Sure one can do many things to safe guard it, etc. But when it comes down to it, the privacy on the internet is Not.
Let’s take a moment to reflect on the past.
Decades ago, the majority of internet traffic was unencrypted, making browsing habits and communications easily visible to your ISP, your ISP’s ISP, the government, and everyone in between. It’s no surprise that the NSA was wiretapping everything at Room 641A. If we look back another decade, we find that secure encryption was heavily restricted by the government. Remember that Zimmerman faced criminal investigation for releasing PGP.
Commercial VPNs for widespread use were still years away, and Tor was being tested in a limited network ran by the researchers. The best options for “private browsing” at that time were “elite” proxies, which didn’t necessarily encrypt traffic or avoid logging browsing history, but at least didn’t forward your real IP address to the destination. Alternatively, users could rely on dubious web proxies, like Anonymizer.com.
In fact, the first efforts at age verification happened decades ago!
What’s happening today is very troubling, but we are still undeniably in a far better position than we were back then. The advancements made over the decades have built upon each other making a foundation that helps to somewhat counteract the recent threats to privacy and anonymity.
Here’s the thing, and this applies to every ideological struggle: your rights can’t be taken for granted. You can’t treat them as a done deal that you can forget about after defeating a law or winning a court ruling. It’s a never-ending tug of war between the government and the people. Complacency can lead to regression as laws can be challenged or overturned, or ignored, and the moment you stop advocating for your side, you risk losing.
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Of course there will be some people who will circumvent states’ rules, piracy in your example. However, for how long will they be able to keep it up, and how useful will it be? People who break laws to protect their rights are in constant danger of the state, and must keep that secret from people who don’t, and thus face isolation.
Further, privacy is fundamentally different from acts like piracy. Privacy is a human necessity and a societal necessity that requires all (in a loose sense) to enjoy. If only a few people have privacy, it won’t be very useful for them, and they will stand out in a dystopian society unless they maintain isolation. The only to be private in a total surveillance society is be private alone.
I agree we are in a better position in some ways, but respectfully I strongly disagree we are overall in a better position now. I believe the advancements we now enjoy are far outweighed by the threats that have emerged over the same timeframe.
It was the case that people didn’t worry, and arguably didn’t need to worry, about their internet traffic being intercepted, stored, analyzed, profiled, etc. The need to encrypt internet traffic always existed, but became urgent when we discovered the NSA is wiretapping everything, and became increasingly urgent as people migrated their lives to the digital world. Fortunately, encrypting internet traffic and messages is one of the advancements we now enjoy.
However, the erosion of privacy is not just about internet traffic, and not just about the NSA and ISP’s. Just to name a few changes for the worse:
- Surveillance capitalism emerged around the 2010’s, and internet use has become de-facto mandatory, thus exposing the masses to unavoidable internet surveillance.
- Society is transitioning from cash to totally-surveilled payment systems, leading to the eventual total loss of financial privacy.
- Surveillance via cameras, other sensors, face recognition etc in meatspace has gone from non-existent or benign to intrusive and unavoidable.
- Some measures to counteract the above concerns are being criminalized, while others, Tor for instance, are losing effectiveness as the arms race evolves.
I agree if we stop fighting then we will lose. I meant to say it appears like we will lose whether we fight or not, now that states and corporations have far too much power, it’s just a matter of by how much.
Privacy is foundational for all other social causes. Without privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of association, etc, nobody can effectively fight for any cause that threatens the interests of those in power.
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