If you're a technologist in the US, I think it's worth sitting with the reality that the government's current abuses against the population are playing out almost every single *"if we allow databases of X, bad thing Y will be possible"* warning.
Performative privacy protections were never enough; we have to make them structural (in law), toothsome (right-of-action for individuals), and national. Nothing else will do.
The problem is that the fascists do not care about the law, and individual action is expensive to pursue.
@SpaceLifeForm That's too glib. Laws encode a social contract (loosely), and the fascists have to erode both law and norms, which takes time and effort. That time is valuable to open societies trying to fight back.
@SpaceLifeForm More to the point: preventing the aggregation and storage of this data in the first place pushes a lot of work onto the fascists, and pre-setting laws creates a latent accountability structure.
One of the few places this was pre-positioned correctly was the SSA. Let's all plan to celebrate the day Musk is behind bars for Doge's data crimes.
