Amazon, Google Unwittingly Reveal the Severity of the U.S. Surveillance State
greenwald.substack.comI know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. Tell everyone you know to stop using their products. They have all been acquiring and amassing surveillance for years through their products and now they're just double dipping with AI training to sell you more of it. The more you can get people to realize and disconnect the better.
I wish more people would use AI to build alternatives with a clear, binding mission not to exploit the data, not to sell or be funded by investors who expect it to, etc. We have the power to build more than ever. We should use it.
>I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products.
I noticed your own app's website [0] hosts videos on YouTube [1] and uses Stripe as a payment processor [2], which is hosted on AWS. You also mentioned that your app is vibe coded [3]; the AI labs that facilitated your vibecoding likely built and run their models using Meta's PyTorch or Google's TensorFlow.
"Just stop using" makes for a catchy manifesto in HackerNews comments, but the reality is a lot more complicated than that.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbCM99cz9W8
Someone commented on a HN threads on just de-googling and he couldn't even pick up his kids without a gmail or apple account.
Just not using it is really unrealistic for the average person at this moment
I know it is probably not the American way but the only way to address this problem is to make laws that prevent a duopoly, penalize anti-competitive behavior and push open-source standards for software/hardware.
Unfortunately, the status quo also means the US (and its tech giants) has real power and control over other countries' technology sector. So, no party in America will make or enforce laws that will change the status quo within the country or overseas.
I have little hope, since the EU is lobbyist-infested like the US, but there is a chance the EU will fund FOSS platforms over centralized solutions. There are already several EU wide or national funds for that and it would help immensly when that money would go to burning out solo devs and maybe even to orgs like mozilla.
> [...] and he couldn't even pick up his kids without a gmail or apple account.
How so?
A lot of schools use apps like 'ParentSquare' to interact and manage the student/teacher/parent relationship, and do not offer the same level of communication through traditional channels anymore.
He needed to verify his identity via an app at pick up time, and needed an gmail/apple account as part of the process. I don't remember which app.
Apple isn't on the evil list, aside from the kowtowing every powerful leader must do not to have their business attacked.
> Apple isn't on the evil list
Yeah, Tim Apple handing over a 24-karat gold plaque to the sitting president is completely normal behavior for CEOs to engage in, and not at all about just making as much money as possible. He had to do that, otherwise Apple as a company would disappear tomorrow. They're just trying to survive.
Unless you're going to demonstrate that handing over a golden plaque implies handing over privacy data to government agencies, I'm going to prefer the former over the latter.
Apple was a PRISM partner. They share just as much with the NSA as Microsoft and Google.
Talking about anti-tech-monopolies and using Stripe-paypal is extra ironic.
I can understand aws, youtube, being on google index, and other things as they sometimes are the most cost efficient or vendors don't offer alternatives... but stripe-paypal is more expensive and worse than the less-bad alternatives. jeez.
> I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products
It's not just hard for some though, literally their livelihood depends on it. Want to run a restaurant today? You basically must have Facebook, Instagram and Google Maps entry for enough people to discover you, probably more than half of the people we got to our restaurant who we ask, cite Google Maps as the reason they found the place, and without half our income, the restaurant wouldn't have survived.
It really depends where the restaurant is located.
That is going to work as the same as telling people to stop buying gas from Standard Oil or stop using Bell Telephone. Without government intervention you cannot break up their control.
I agree that government restrictions usually help if they're implemented well, but part of the issue is the government is benefiting from this kind of thing.
Also, most people don't actually need something like Amazon. Not to minimize the level of investment in it, but I don't see Amazon or Google as being quite the same as Bell or Standard Oil. Maybe between Google and Apple there's some kind of duopoly like that?
My impression is people don't value — either because they don't understand or minimize — things that protect privacy and anonymity. This is a standard refrain on these kinds of forums and elsewhere — "your typical person doesn't know or care about [feature X that preserves privacy, choice, and autonomy], they just want something that works and is fun". It's been belittled as unfashionable or paranoid or performative or something, when it's really something that's had short term costs that pale in comparison to the long-term costs.
I'm not saying governments don't need to be on the "right side" but I think people need to see security as involving not just encryption and so forth, but also decentralization, anonymity, demonopolization, and censorship resistance. It needs to be seen as part of the product or service benefits.
A lot of this reminds me of stuff from the 90s, when network security was ignored for awhile for customer convenience's sake. It seems really similar now, only the thing that's been ignored is like user control and privacy or something like that.
I think the thing that's surprising to me, for example, is that it takes a Super Bowl ad for people to realize that maybe there are downsides to letting a monopoly have access to video throughout the neighborhood everywhere.
You can start by creating a email at tuta or proton. It does not have to be 100% overnight
I'm not sure its necessarily that simple. For example, because of the job market for software engineers I have moved to new cities multiple times during my adult life. As a result, my social network is highly fragmented and without Facebook it would be incredibly difficult for me to manage.
So for me "stop using Facebook" sound similar to saying "burn all of your family photos and throw away your ability to talk to many of the people who are important to you."
I don't say this to necessarily mean that you are completely wrong, just to point out that opting out of these companies can be more complicated than it may initially appear.
Where are you that Facebook (the network, not meta as a company) is still minimally relevant ? I haven’t logged in in about a decade.
Its an intractable problem because people now have a general expectation that everything is "free".
Look at Kagi's success and compare it to Google. It doesn't even register.
People need to start paying for things, because if you're not paying for it, you're not in control of it.
I see what you're saying but I don't think that's the answer for everything, because people also pay for conveniences, like a Ring subscription so that Amazon stores footage in their cloud for you.
The problem is centralization is more convenient for consumers. You can easily control your doorbell, your garage door, your security cameras with 1 app, and everything just works.
Open source and decentralized solutions need to be just as convenient and cheaper than centralized ones for consumers to choose them.
Alternatively, basic stuff like e-mail and payment processing should be provided by the state. After all, the state provides a road network, which is similarly essential and rather more expensive.
Giving the state control of things to prevent the state from easily spying on people...
Not only that, but were it State-implemented, it would be an AWFUL implementation all the way through.
This is the likely direction things are going. The US government can decide that EU officials are out of favor, and then those officials are locked out of Office/Gsuite.
Getting away from American tech has become an actual national security issue.
Ideally you would still have private enterprise create alternatives, but it’s easy to imagine that email, social media will simply be built for citizens by their government.
E-mail used to be provided by your isp and there were enough different ISPs ( at least in my country ) to not have a duopoly.
People pay for things and are still spied on.
People wear seatbelts and still die too.
We need to move in the right direction, not get paralysis in the status quo because of high profile edge cases.
No matter what there will always be warrants and wire taps. The goal is to get away from the "free flow" of information.
The point is, paying for things isn’t a solution. Paying for things is a consequence of having fixed the problem. I pay for Kagi and buy groceries from a ma-and-pa grocery store where I’m still going to be tracked if I use a credit card, bring my phone (or go with someone else who brings their phone), drive certain cars…
In most cases there can’t be movement in this direction and to the degree there can be, it isn’t enough.
>People need to start paying for things
...with money. They are already paying for things by violating their own privacy and those around them. The irony is that the amount of money required for the service is much less the expected value of the surveillance for the provider. Service payment is an insurance expense, protecting against individual and systematic violation of the 4th Amendment rights. It's insurance (and cheap insurance) because this usually doesn't matter in practice. But sometimes it does, and when it does it REALLY does matter.
<tinfoil_hat>It would be smart for surveillance capital to fund some of these privacy forward providers, steer them to both charge you for a service and violate your privacy, hope for a very public controversy, and eventually discredit the fundamental approach.</tinfoil_hat>
And the problem with that is, all the money has been siphoned off by the people at the top.
That's one of the big hidden factors driving the ad/surveillance economy: people's purchasing power just isn't what it used to be, while at the same time they're expected to be paying regularly for more things than ever before (home broadband, mobile phone plans, etc).
We could
- regulate the crap out of surveillance capitalism.
- enforce laws on the books
- Break up firms
Tech used to have a leg to stand on in the face of government over reach. Today, tech firms have largely adapted to the incentives that actually make themselves known every quarter.
Customer support, content moderation, compliance are avoided, and lobbying argues that if you dont let tech it easy, your economy wont innovate. Except enshittification is the term to describe how extractive mature tech markets become.
I am all for more subscription models, but this shouldn’t come at the cost of throwing our hands up and ignoring the many changes that can better align the current incentives.
Using AI to do anything isn't going to liberate one. It's just going to shift the dependence from one company to another. Your new feudal lord will be the people running the Santa Claus machine you're running. Don't keep trying to tell people AI is the solution. The real solution is self-hosting. And that cannot be AI'd half as easily.
The suggestion is not to depend on AI for privacy, but to use it to build products like signal which guarantee privacy. Using AI to build a product doesn't mean sharing the data from that product. In addition, right now AI has little vendor lock in and there are multiple competitive alternatives, so becoming dependent on a single company is not so likely.
You can self host AI but speed and quality aren’t going to be as good as what companies can offer.
And the upfront cost will be quite high.
Meta was easy - nothing of value is lost. Google and Amazon are a bit harder.
They are everywhere
> But the graphic Amazon used seems to have unwittingly depicted how invasive this technology can be
This is a calculated move to normalize such technology. Yes, it will cause controversy in the short term, and these companies knew this was a possibility—but as a result the image in people's minds won't be the gestapo rounding up grannies; it'll kids finding puppies. To call this "unwitting" is simply naive (not surprising for Greenwald).
That’s why I’m hoping the news picks this up more - especially about the intended integration with flock/ICE. That might be the issue that brings awareness mainstream beyond the tech-aware circles
No marketing team would willingly do this and it's insane to think otherwise.
Cambridge Analytica was an experiment run by a marketing team. I wouldn't say marketing will always side on ethics.
Propaganda is, and always has been, a subset of marketing aimed at shifting public perception. It would be wild to assume it never happens.
Insane is a bit hyperbolic. The history of marketing is full of grand mistakes that seem absurd in hindsight.
OP was suggesting this wasn't a mistake. They are suggesting it's a win for Amazon, even with the backlash, because it frames the technology the way they want to.
Of course, they would. If the administration asked Bezos, and he gets a benefit out of it. He will task his marketing team to come up with something which tries to frame it in a positive light. Knowing that even if a few people make a stink this will blow over eventually and when it rolls out, he can always say it is just about puppies and neighborhood security. Nobody cares.
And yet this went up. I understand it’s easy to just say “marketing teams don’t understand anything,“ but I have worked with many and they are incredibly sensitive to negative feelings/reactions. They get it wrong but they tend to air on the side of caution which means the vast majority of the time they avoid situations like this incredibly intentionally.
>they tend to air on the side of caution
Completely off topic, and for future reference, it's "err" not "air".
Completely fine mistake, stupid homophones and all. Just thought you'd like to know.
Also, these things happen to me all the time if I use voice dictation. I don't trust it because of edge cases like this.
Marketing teams are constantly out of touch with the message they want to convey vs the message that gets conveyed. The creative team is usually not even talking to the other teams that would drive decisions like this - they almost exclusively are an isolated team (purposefully, like how engineers are often isolated from customers) that talks to a separate marketing team that then manages things like legal/compliance, which then bubbles up to other orgs etc.
The people creating ads are just organizationally isolated in most cases.
> on the side of caution which means the vast majority of the time they avoid situations like this
They'll avoid negative perception because this is their job, the message is still arbitrary.
> I have worked with many and they are incredibly sensitive to negative feelings/reactions.
And yet there are countless examples that show the exact opposite.
This made it through one of the largest marketing budgets in the world…
Glenn Greenwald is back on substack. Yay! For the past few years, he’s mostly done videos on rumble, and he’s fun to watch, but personally I prefer his writing. In case you’ve been under a rock for 10 years, Greenwald was the guy who published Snowden’s revelations. His focus has always been on censorship, surveillance, and hypocrisy in government.
His focus has also involved generous amounts of simping for Russian fascists, excusing their colonialist wars, etc. Not an anti-imperialist, just anti-US.
link?
"Yay" Greenwald is (still) playing footsie down at the Nazi bar.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-s...
Rumble is indeed a free for all, with lots of angry kooks. But it’s also a place where reasonable dissenting voices have found a way to get their ideas heard. It’s a mixed bag.
As it should be. If it's not a mixed bag, you're in an echo-chamber. That's why I hang out here on HN with my fellow crazies who can separate ideas, thoughts and knowledge from the person.
Well… let’s be fair… outside of tech specific posts, this place is Reddit/r/poltics maybe the lite version. This is an echo chamber on at least a dozen major topics.
> Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters
If we're gonna judge authors for what platforms they're using, does that mean we're all bad guys here on HN too, since a lot of current misery is because of startups and technology companies who used to receive a lot praise here?
Yes.
It's always fun reminding people that the internet was invented by the US military
So was the programming compiler, not sure what that's supposed to tell us. Programming languages are violent?
The Department of Whore?
You mean Snowden had to force his material on him, he reluctantly published it, got hooked on the fame and promptly jumped the shark
I personally miss Snowden's revelations so much. Such a brave soul! He should keep doing what he does best and never stop. It's sad that we have not heard any new revelations from him for a long time, though. Any ideas why he stopped?
I'm not sure if it's sarcasm or something, but Snowden essentially lives in exile from his home as the US government would like to punish him for exposing the secrets of the US government spying on everyone. Not sure what new revelations could come from him.
A brave and smart guy like Edward will always find his ways to expose overreach of the authritarian goverments wherever he is. He will get to the bottom of things no matter what and will find an outlet for his findings. Especially now that another of his kin, Julian Assange, is free and ready to go.
It's a clear violation of the 4th Amendment, but the government acts like they've found a "loophole" because it's private businesses doing the spying.
The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, founded in 1850, operated largely outside the constraints of the Fourth Amendment for much of the 19th century because they were private agents, not government actors. Congress passed the Anti-Pinkerton Act in 1893, which prohibited the federal government from hiring Pinkerton employees or similar organizations.
As an attorney I’d like to understand why you think there is a “clear” Constitutional violation going on here. What activity, specifically, are you referring to, and what precedent supports your claim?
You're an attorney and you're asking me why the government spying on everyone is a clear violation of the 4th Amendment?
If corporations and government are acting together, this is fascism (according to Mussolini). It seems that is already the case. It's just we can it democracy. Perhaps crypto-fascism is the right term.
Just give them fake information when signing up. They want your money more than accurate information.
It’s pretty amazing when you get the worst of both worlds—total surveillance, yet still rampant crime.
That's the only way it can be in a system with thousands of crimes on the books.
People commit minor offenses, and often felonies without knowing it, on a regular basis. If surveillance was consistently used to actually enforce the laws, people would a) notice the surveillance[0] and then actually object to it and b) start objecting to all the ridiculous and poorly drafted laws they didn't even know existed.
But they don't want the majority of people objecting to things. They want a system that provides a thousand pretexts to punish anyone who does something they don't like, even something they're supposed to have a right to do, by charging them with any of the laws that everybody violates all the time and having the surveillance apparatus in place so they can do it to anyone as long as it's not done to everyone. That doesn't work if the laws are enforced consistently and the majority thereby starts insisting that they be reasonable.
On the other hand, those thousands of crimes on the books exist because American society operates under a norm of "if its not explicitly illegal then its fine for people to do it". See for example, the rhetoric around maximizing shareholder value.
If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal, then the logical outcome is to make more and more things explicitly illegal.
IMHO, that's one of the core failures of modern Libertarian/Objectivist influenced thought.
> If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal, then the logical outcome is to make more and more things explicitly illegal.
Except that that isn't the only way to protect yourself from selfish people and the assumption that it is is the source of a significant proportion of the dumb laws.
There is a narrow class of things that have to be prohibited by law because there is otherwise no way to prevent selfish people from doing them, like dumping industrial waste into the rivers. What these look like is causing harm to someone you're not otherwise transacting with so that they can't prevent the harm by refusing to do business with you. And then you need functional antitrust laws to ensure competitive markets.
The majority of dumb laws are laws trying to work around the fact that we don't have functional antitrust laws, or indeed have the opposite and have laws propping up incumbents and limiting competition, and therefore have many concentrated markets where companies can screw customers and workers because they have inadequate alternatives. Trying to patch that with prohibitions never works because in a concentrated market there are an unlimited number of ways the incumbents can screw you and you can't explicitly prohibit every one of them; the only thing that works is to reintroduce real competition.
...because the point of surveillance was never to solve crime.
The rampant crime is largely made up.
Compared to other major western countries, the US has a serious problem with violent crime in particular.
If remove like 250sq mi of land from that stat you can cut the violent crime stat by 90%.
There are some neighborhoods with more murders in a month than some whole states see in a couple years.
Not popular.
We know exactly where the majority of crime is in the US, you are correct, down to the neighborhood.
Now… let’s say you were to call the national guard in to safeguard those areas, how do you think that would go over by those cities governors and reaction media? I guess the answer depends on the year.
And science already told you the best improvement ever, in the world history with regards to violent crime, came from unleaded gasoline.
So, are you using your brain and demanding other systemic changes like free mental-health care and housing? or are you just being a tool and wanting more police violence?
Who’s making up the homicide and other violent crime statistics and for what purpose?
Which statistics are you looking at? Crime has been dropping since the 90s, with the exception of short term regressions.
https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-is-likely-down-an-enormo...
You do realize these are still crap compared to other countries right?
Small rich counties with vast majority homogeneous populations?
What statistics? These?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me...
You should look at a comparison of American violent crime to other major western nations.
How do the stats look compared to 5, 10, 20, 40 years ago?
What are you basing this claim on?
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-06-1...
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/11/19/gallup-crime-p...
There's always the question of where exactly you're referring to and what kind of crime you're referring to. But I assumed that's what the parent post was referring to.
Really? Rampant white collar crime is made up?
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I know Ring is getting a bad rap for enabling state level surveillance, but the Ring app offers an option to enable end-to-end encryption between the camera and your phone.
The stored video is encrypted with key generated on your phone. You have to be physically close to the camera in order to share the key and complete the set-up. Once encrypted, the video can't be analyzed by AI or used in a broad surveillance effort.
It's entirely possible that the encryption keys have a backdoor, but I doubt it. Although there is no way to verify.
End-to-end encryption only means something if you trust the endpoints.
They often also tend to call HTTPS end-to-end encryption
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/media/securing-your-origin-for-...
even Amazon Web Services:
Benefits of using HTTPS connections: HTTPS provides end-to-end encryption
When national interests require that, it can get a firmware update which sends a copy of data to comrades in U.S. Ministerium für Staatssicherheit even before that e2e encrypted copy reaches your phone.
Big Brother… It's a cliché, but I think it's a fitting expression. Is it true that individuals themselves are the only means of self-defense?
This type of centralization breeds authoritarianism. See also the Iran protests. There’s too many single points of failure in technology. These systems become sources of oppression inevitably.
How do we build a resilient system that doesn’t rely on single platforms?
> How do we build a resilient system that doesn’t rely on single platforms?
by making sure that compatibility is enshrined into law, so that competition occurs, rather than walled gardens.
It has to start at the top - gov't has to mandate it.
Anything that relies on gov't can be undone by gov't. Or weaponized by gov't.
We need resilience that's hard to regulate or undo.
You already had resilience that was very hard to undo: three independent branches of government, indirect elections via the electoral college, separation of church and state, strong protections for freedom of speech, independent journalism. Yet you still managed to have it undone.
What does a non-government solution look like to you that can't be undone by the People?
You (and the rest of the world) are not really swimming in a sea og alternatives.
If government regulation is the tool which can bring the amount of torque needed to loosen the screws on competition, then government is the tool you have to use.
Regulation is also being developed around the world to figure out how to address the challenges being thrown up. The DSA and GDPR are being studied and better policy will result.
Government has connotations in America, that end up derailing any conversation about it.
Usually at some point, it gets pointed out that Tech is booming in America, while it’s moribund in Europe, and do you really want to be Europe? This shifts the conversation to what kind of money you want to make.
It looks like an endless captcha.
Browser / DNS issue. Wireless fine here on WiFi and mobile.
> "All of this is particularly remarkable, and particularly disconcerting, since we are barely more than a decade removed from the disclosures about mass domestic surveillance enabled by the courageous whistleblower Edward Snowden..."
With respect to Greenwald, I don't think it's remarkable at all.
I have learned, through experience, that sometimes when people want to do things they should not, or against which there is opposition, there is enormous power in simply doing it. If you ignore people enough, you can do anything.
Preventing this requires systems with accountability.
And as HN commenters frequently note, accountability for government, tech, or corporate leaders in general seems culturally missing in the US.
Despite Snowden, nothing here is remarkable. This has grown because it _can_ grow.
USA society has devolved into a game. The only object is to win. Nothing else matters.
This probably even has ramifications beyond US residents.
I'm confident Google etc will be compelled (if they haven't already been) to share their dossiers with the US and allies so that there is a file on each individual's psychology, weaknesses, and a how-to manual for gaslighting that person with the goal to silence them or coerce them into acting a certain way.
And by then, the Stasi would look like cute amateurs in comparison.
Those raising these concerns have been dismissed as paranoid for decades, even post-Snowden. And yet, surprising no-one, here we are.
I've noticed a big split in viewpoint between people who don't live in the US.
Its like those who live in the states have a incentive to act like everything going on is ok, while those outside are increasingly having statements like yours. "How do you not see this power 13 years past Snowden"
I've not given up trying to point out how dangerous the US govs powers are in the hands of an ever less capable and more fascist government, ie posting here on HN, but the odds to convince people are low.
I spend significant time in the US, Canada, and Europe, and nobody I talk to seems to think that what's going on is OK.
Both Canada and Europe are undertaking major projects to reduce their interdependence with America, and public sentiment on America has changed rapidly since the current administration assumed power. Europeans have always distrusted American tech, and Canadians have started trying to break away as well.
The Americans I spend time with are also unhappy with the direction things are going, but most of them still use Google Chrome and buy everything on Amazon. They seem to be less willing to accept a little bit of inconvience to take a moral stand.
Great writeup. Glenn mentions that he stopped using Gemini. While I still use Gemini for technical research and occasional coding/design work via Antigravity, for all day to day queries and prompts I have switched to using Proton's Lumo that is really quite good: use of a strong Mistral model and web search is 100% private, and while chat history is preserved for a while it is stored and processed like Proton Mail.
More good reading that I found helpful are the books: Privacy is Power and Surveillance Capitalism.
I can say from direct experience Apple is not any better and at times much worse as they actively lie about their security measures by obscuring loopholes left open for direct government access as well as they cooperate with little to no push back.
The backlash against the use of Ring cameras began with their tone-deaf superbowl ad. Amazon assumed that customers would buy their surveillance technology. The whole thing reminds me that we have returned to the Gilded Age, when the rich people who run the world strutted about arrogantly, without fear of shame or public disapproval. It’s as if Bezos is telling us “you have no choice. You will buy our product whether you like it or not.”
Will another Progressive Era bring about more equality, or are the billionaires too entrenched?
The bigger problem is that our digital gilded age is founded in an entrenched culture organizing and framing support for it. It’s one that has been carefully created with several tracks of effort going back decades (some even a century).
Counterculture is disorganized and shallow, and funding is not as abundant where understanding of this problem exists.
Anyone have an archive link?
why do you need it? The article is available in full via the link.
Once again we see tech companies capitulating to the US government who is actually doing the things we accuse China is theoretically doing in the future.
I don't own a smart speaker. It's actually annoying because there are so few options for a music system now. I've previously owned a Sonos but honestly it's just not a polished product. Anyway, my issue with smart speakers is I don't want a cloud-connected always-on microphones in my house. Sorry but no. You simply never know when law enforcement will use such a thing via a warrant nobody can tell you about (ie FISA). It could be targeted to you, individually but there are far worse alternatives.
It could be a blanket warrant against, say, people posting negatively against ICE online. Or microphones couldd be used to identify such people based on what it hears. You just have no control.
And once again, Google handed over PII voluntarily to the government recently [1]. Companies don't need to comply with administrative subpoenas. It takes a court order signed by a judge to enforce.
All of this is just another reason why China was correct to keep US tech companies out, basically. But here's where it's going to get much worse for the US and those same companies: when the EU decides enough is enough and creates their own versins that are subject to EU jurisdiction.
[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/10/google-sent-personal-and-f...
I bought some tower speakers made in the early 2000s and they sound awesome. Huge heavy things, but it's not like I've ever had to move them since I bought them. I power them with an inexpensive NAD amplifier that supports streaming and bluetooth sources.
Who would have thought that after changing no laws to ban the behavior, firing nobody, and re-upping the post-9/11 laws consistently, that the process would continue? I, for one, am shocked... that anyone might be shocked about this.
Don't worry, I'm sure that trusting these systems to a group of ghouls from the Epstein files won't have any negative consequences.
At this point, it's fair to assume that if the US government wanted to surveil you to a nefarious end, they absolutely could, easily, using things you bought to make your life more convenient.
The keys then become:
1) Implementing policies discouraging them from doing so at the societal level
and
2) Implementing force behind those policies at the personal and societal level
DHS isn't getting paid right now because Kristi "Dog Shooter" Noem managed to screw up so badly that even Congressional Republicans under Trump don't want to own her agency's behavior and carved DHS out of the normal funding bill. There's still a chance for #1 to be achieved. #2 remains to be seen at the societal level, but you can start working on that yourself for the personal level.
Sadly ICE and CBP is still getting paid because it was already funded by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. [1]
So while some parts of DHS aren't funded, and it does give Democrats bargaining power, it could still end up in a situation like the October 2025 shutdown where they don't get meaningful change.
TSA employees won't get paid which could impact air travel. Probably not as bad as when FAA employees weren't getting paid but if it's bad enough the pressure for Democrats to cave again will be high.
[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/one-big-beautiful-bill-made-ice-sh...
I laugh at myself sometimes for things like this: I refuse to provide my phone number to the cashier who promises me loyalty points, then I hand over the same credit card number I use for all my purchases. Boy, I really showed them how much I value my privacy!
Same, exactly the same here.
But the other holes in the bucket doesn't mean you have to help. From a real opsec point of view a single tiny hole is the same as no wall at all. But from a day to day view less is less. It does at least reduce the spam.
And there is also, say you plug hole A and you can't do anything about hole B.
Some day something may develop that changes hole B (maybe a new law, maybe it's a service that you can stop using, maybe one org stops cooperating with another, whatever).
If hole A has already been wide open for years then closing hole B may not change much. But if hole A has been closed for years when the opportunity to close hole B comes along, then maybe closing hole B actually does something.
I choose to see it as something is better than nothing and it's worth it to apply pressure and be sand in the gears.
It's got to be better for everyone that there is at least some sand in the gears than if there were no sand in the gears.
I always pay in cash. I go out of my way to get cash and travel to more distant stores to spend it.
How are those two things the same?!
He’s not wrong but screw Glenn Greenwald. I assume his solution will be to back the current or next strongman, because strongman rule will save us?
It’s like the “don’t tread on me” militia crowd voting by like a 90% margin for a regime that is now enacting every single one of the things they’ve been afraid of for 50 years: masked cops, opaque detention centers, assaulting (and murdering) people for legally exercising second amendment rights, mass surveillance, social credit systems, and so on.
Or, I guess, like Lenin creating a totalitarian state to enslave the workers to liberate the workers? Or the French Revolution replacing the monarchy with the terror? Many examples in history I suppose.
What evidence do you have the Glenn Greenwald wants a strongman?
If anything, he has been attacked by numerous 'strong men' (in various governments!) over several years.
Greenwald is a vocal and consistent anti-institutionalist, and this creates the conditions for strongmen to take over. Whether he is aware of having this effect is not relevant.
He criticizes the military-industrial complex. Don’t you think that’s an institution worth dismantling?
Greenwald has criticized every institution that exists, so there's not a signal there.
I don’t see where you’re coming from. Greenwald is constantly pointing out abuses of power and hypocrisy in government. Have you actually read what he writes? He is in no way a fan of totalitarian strongmen.
Greenwald defends totalitarian strongmen abroad by his reflexive and universal opposition to American power. His stance on Ukraine, for example, is as extremely pro-Putin as any writing can get without saying "I love Vlad and I will kiss him".