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As much as I hate it, I think this battle is already lost. Be it a social media company like Facebook or a computing devices company like Apple. They are going to kowtow to the wishes of the state to earn their profits.

Also, I don't think it is just the state. There is no way to know if they are in majority but I am sure many people also buy into this argument. If you argue for encryption and antonymity, I am sure someone will bring up one of the four horses of infocalypse.



Please stop spreading learned helplessness and donate to Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://eff.org.


It's hard not to feel helpless.

Consider the Iraq war. The largest worldwide protests the world has ever seen, but the US and UK didn't give a shit. Saddam didn't have WMDs, so the US and UK governments made up "evidence". The UN vote failed, so the US strong armed the UK into joining them in a ploy to blackmail UN members for votes. The US and UK went to war anyway, even though the UK's own legal advisor had previously thought it illegal - funnily enough, he had a complete u-turn after a visit to the US. How many killed as a result? How many children maimed? And for what, to score political points and further line the pockets of the rich and powerful.

And what consequences for all of this corruption, for all of the lies to the people of the US and UK? Nothing.

Western governments, and their security apparatus, particularly in the US and UK, are utterly and completely corrupt, broken. They are so good at controlling the narrative that most of the populace doesn't even have a clue what is going on, and would give half a shit even if they did.

We are well and truely fucked.


The US didn't need to strong-arm the UK; Blair was very much a willing participant.


Yes, that's very true, I was actually going to put that in brackets but forgot!


Yes, but the EFF’s main focus is the US. What could people in the remaining five countries do?


In the UK, the Open Rights Group[0] and Liberty.[1]

[0] https://www.openrightsgroup.org/

[1] https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/


In France for instance you can donate to laquadrature.net. They do a really great job given their small size. You will probably find similar associations in other European countries.


For Europe, there is https://edri.org.




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