How governments should improve privacy and security

[Quantum]

@dont-sell-my-privacy

That does not have to be the case, there are pro-privacy laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA that have not had unintended consequences that undermine privacy. When creating such laws there is also space for privacy advocates and others to voice concerns, which would be taken into account.

Neither of those laws provide any substantial privacy protections. A good ad blocker extension and VPN do exponentially more.

@dont-sell-my-privacy

The government would not choose our methods of communication, maybe I worded vaguely what I meant. I meant that the government would start incentivizing / working on alternative open standard systems to the current SMS, e-mail and phone call communcations. Because the current ones are not great for privacy and security. It would be nice to have alternatives that did not leak metadata and had strong encryption. Such changes would provide billions with secure and private communication by default.

Ok I think I can support this if the point is to provide public investment in privacy friendly open source projects. The wording in your OP made me think you were advocating to ban email/SMS. Providing investment for alternatives is definitely something that is all win.

@dont-sell-my-privacy

Private companies like LinkedIn and WhatsApp hold a lot of social power and people are (in)directly often forced to use those privacy violating services. That is personally why I believe privacy should be regulated by default for everyone, so that such abuse does not happen.

LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Google, etc provide services people find valuable. That is why they are so popular. Privacy focused alternatives, as far as they can exist (I don’t think a private LinkedIn could work), can gain marketshare if they work well. Signal is continuing to gain popularity as is Proton. But I do not want the government mandating what services we can and cannot use or how private companies can do business with willing customers.

@dont-sell-my-privacy

Do you think privacy should be given to everyone by default or do you belive it should be optional for those who want it?

Optional for those who want it. We really like private options because we are privacy advocates. But not everyone is. Banning products and services because they do not meet an arbitrary level of “privacy by default” is dystopian and begging for abuse. Who gets to decide what counts as “private” or not?

If someone likes using Instagram with full knowledge of the privacy implications, why should the government stop them?

Freedom means actually being free to make choices even if you do not like the choices other people make with their freedom.