Edit: if the above Invidious link doesn’t work, here’s the YouTube link.
*Let me start by trying to de-demonize or demystify the word and concept of “fighting” for something. If I have the will and means to take up arms and weapons against an aggressor that plots to take away my freedom, I shall gather an army and vanquish my oppressors by force. If a doctor tells me that my only chance of surviving an affliction is by laying absolutely still in bed and doing nothing, I will do just that. There is no meaningless magnitude or amplitude, quantity or quality, or any other measurement, to a person’s fight for a cause that they believe in.
With that out of the way, I’ll go first.
Have been doing of late\ I have been trying to spread the word on the privacy implications of “smart glasses”/Raybans by e-mail to newspapers, restaurants, public installations (libraries, pools, schools, municipal administrations, etc), to county and government.
Obstacles put in place by government\ A few years back, police gained legal right to wiretap and to frisk without a warrant. The prison and parole industry gained virtually limitless access to both convicted and no yet convicted people’s biometric data (only fingerprints, for now) if available in police records for any reason. SIM cards can no longer be obtained, regardless of the type, without supplying your government issued personal identification number. Private pro profit companies can evade GDPR compliance by registering applying for such an exemption, for instance, in order to supply online phone number, address, date of birth, financial information and criminal records to the general public.
I don’t think most people can acknowledge when their personal and online intersected, they can… but they see online privacy as an online thing, not a real life thing. You wouldn’t give a stranger at the shop your driving license just to get in.
I believe I understand the psychological mechanism behind it, but it is unfortunate, nontheless, that people separate any part of their private life from politics. Even though the idea is that we have voted for whatever parliament/congress ultimately decides, as long as we are subject to law and order as defined by and for the profit of the ruling class, we are not safe. One day all contraception could become illegal. Sugar, butter, flower and other basic groceries could be rationed. Libraries could be forced to remove anti government litterature from the bookshelves. Or, as we have seen in, for instance, Iran and China, Internet access could become restricted, censored or removed all together.
One of the saddest examples of this collective mentality in which everyday life and politics are seen as separate worlds is Japan, which I experienced while living there for six years. A lot of people took democracy for granted, saying that politics is a discipline or a profession that they would rather leave to the “professionals”, meaning the politicians. As if the people shouldn’t put their noses where they don’t belong. As if political decisions didn’t directly impact their everyday life.