Hello people, I know it has been awhile but I’m back. So, what methods can we use to make governments and there departments more privacy respecting to the public people? And not just petitions or bills, they are venerable to lobby groups. No I mean a l complex plan to make sure your (or someone else’s) petition or bill gets approved by the government, without any interventions from lobby groups.
1 Like
I don’t think a plan like what you’re suggesting is doable, but I do think we can influence our governments to be more privacy respecting. Off the top of my head I would think that using privacy conscious options and being an advocate for privacy goes a long way. People are thinking about privacy more and more lately, and I think we would do well to capitalize on that and help the average person move to more secure or private options were possible.
The other thing we can do is support the advocacy groups that speak out against these bills. EFF is an easy organization to support. Mozilla is another. Both make a big deal about publicizing problems they see in digital privacy and they get the attention of the big media companies. These are in effect the lobbyist that we can use to influence government.
3 Likes
Governments are instruments of legalized initiation of force. They are tremendously vested in identifying everyone and all their activities and controlling as many of those as possible by the fundamental nature of government.
1 Like
Completely agree. Google especially has accumulated the largest database of human activity ever recorded in human history. The U.S. government knows this and is certainly helping itself to Google’s data, from complete tracking of Jan 6 protesters to detailing movements of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. No way the U.S. empire would ever pressure Google to stop domestic or global surveillance.
I expect the situation to get worse, not better. The way to stop this would be to destroy the business livelihood of these maniacal companies. But people won’t, because Android is more “convenient” than Grapheneos or Linux.
Besides, advances in the field of AI will give even more power to track the global population and influence the course of human history. We are entering the Age of Manipulation.
That would defeat the point of a democracy. You can’t just listen to your voice and ignore anyone that opposes it; that’s called a dictatorship.
What is a more realistic approach is to tell your politicians what you want, as their job is to represent you - the people. If they don’t do what people want, they’ll lose the next election (and therefore their jobs).
A simple petition or email may not work, so maybe you should join or donate to a digital rights group in your country.
1 Like
Going to just state the obvious here: Vote! 
There are numerous politicians (at least in the US) who have publicly taken stances towards more privacy-respecting measures. Those are people you can vote for 
And obviously the rest of the advice in this thread is great too.
Something else I’ll say is to make sure you’re educating the people around you. I like to think most people who spend time with me (friends & family) begin to realize how important privacy is and it then becomes something they internalize as ‘important’ - which is a big step in at least making them think about the problem if it’s ever a political issue. They’ll know and understand that a politician trying to push a surveillance measure is bad and not necessarily just a passive issue they don’t care much about.
You caring more about privacy than your friend doesn’t change how impactful your vote is, so recruiting just a couple people in your life to understand the importance of privacy is arguably much more important than anything you could do yourself, especially when you factor influence they can have on people in their lives.
6 Likes