Quote (thesnipa @ 22 Sep 2022 17:54)
in any case NSA and the patriot act are child's play compared to big tech. and most of the "muh privacy" crowd doesnt even bother to download a VPN, has a gmail, logs into youtube on all devices, etc. then they try to call their relationship with big tech consensual once its pointed out, as if they've read and agreed to all the privacy documents instead of just clicking the button at lightspeed.
in terms of pure scope, 100%. a combination of ignorance and laziness, as well as a lack of legal protections, made corporate data harvesting an unfathomably large issue. that's the sad reality literally everywhere in the world (even though the EU is ever so slightly pushing back against some of it - in its typically slow, cumbersome, bureaucratic, impractical, and easily to ridicule way).
that wasn't my point though, i was commenting on government (taxpayer) funded surveillance of the population, about perceived (or marketed) freedoms, and the hilariously unaware narratives many of your fellow countymen still uncritically push...
it's not that the US is the worst or anything - far from it, if you compare it to the likes of china, saudi-arabia, or russia for example. but is also isn't the shining beacon that many still seem to believe it is. not any more...