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.
@slightlyoff but those same databases make US technologists so much money
@slightlyoff law is an arbitrary and guarantees almost nothing when speaking about fascists, we are quickly reaching the period where "dynamite the concentration camp train lines" is more apt
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.
