2020-05-24
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Where I come from, if any of these surveillance moves Google has
come up with were actually done by my government there would have
been the sort of outrage that the government would have been
sacked. At least this is my hope.

There is a funny dynamism between the expected outcomes and the
amount of outrage. I claim that people actually understand quite
well that they have been outsmarted, jailed and anesthetized by
Google and friends, but while they understand this, they see no
way out, so they revert to shrugging their shoulders and repeating
the whaddayagonnado mantra.

They semi-consciously make an assessment of their own capabilities
and tools that can be used against the threat and they assess the
threat too small for the effort that it would take them to gather
a defence.

So, even if I am not able to defend myself up to a standard I
would be happy with, I can see that my capabilities and tools
are in principle close enough that it makes sense to get mad
about not hitting the required level.

But most people don't think they have a shot at privacy.

It's like if I started running now, I would not be angry at
myself for not being in the top 50 runners by the end of the
year. If the goal is unreasonable, there is no rational reason
to be angry about not making it.

Of course, this turns into a problem for the people who are angry,
since their anger seems now unreasonable to the person who has
(perhaps correctly) evaluated themselves not able to fight but
has failed to evaluate the capabilities of the angry person.

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