I have bad news. There is really very, very little you can do to avoid government surveillance, and in the end it's almost entirely pointless. Between that amazing tracking device in your pocket that you feed all of your personal information to, data brokers, facial recognition, cameras everywhere, it's pretty much impossible to avoid surveillance.
That said, I think it's important that we do try at least to corrupt that data set any way we can. I've got my local member of congress (and apparently other political organizations) thinking I'm a middle aged person of color; I'm not. Always falsify your information whenever possible and feasible, including tagging other people in photos as yourself, etc.
There is no way to avoid surveillance, government or private, but we can do our best to screw with the data.
I don't understand why one wouldn't also do whatever is within their means and energy levels to avoid surveillance, as well? Have you a reason for suggesting people don't do it?
Sure, surveillance is very pervasive, and much worse than people seem to want to admit to themselves. But I don't really get why "oh well, give up" makes sense to you there, and you're so excited about providing false information. Why not both?
Going outside for a day and leaving the phone fully off in the back of a drawer is good fun for the whole family, and can be done. Getting Tails onto a USB stick is easy for many and even fun for some, and you can make copies for your friends. Getting that old brick phone out of the other drawer, getting the old charger for it, and taking that out sometimes when you only need calls, can be good fun too.
I don't get why it'd be so black and white, especially considering that's it's so empowering and interesting to learn more about privacy and get a bit more engaged, even on a small personal level.
Have you a reason for suggesting people don't do it?
If I may turn that back on you, how exactly does one avoid surveillance? Your phone is the most obvious culprit, so you'd need to get rid of that. Facial recognition software is getting better at recognizing people even if they are wearing a mask, and the cameras capturing that are everywhere; just look at traffic signals and the camera's on top.
In modern society, right now, it is pretty much unavoidable unless you got rid of most electronics and never set foot outside for many, many years.
Zero-to-one-hundred real quick there. The important thing for the general population isn't so much to go full Unabomber, live in the woods, speak to nobody, but to make tracking just a little more difficult. Mabye set Location Services (when prompted by an app) to "Only while using" instead of "Always". Use Signal (or even iMessage) instead of SMS or Facebook Messenger. Use Apple Maps (or Open Street Maps) instead of Google Maps. Click "Deny All" instead of "Allow All" when prompted for Cookies, use Apple's Private Relay, the list goes on.
The point isn't to make tracking impossible, but to make it cost more; in time, in resources, in terms of capital.
Where is the app that uses two or more comms channels with text messages (e.g. WhatsApp & Signal & iMessage) in order to send a message ? Something like a one-time pad technique, except that no single comms channel has the unencrypted message. Require that ALL channels be cracked/surveilled in order to XOR (or some other algo) them all together to crack a message.
I already had a whole paragraph, which I'll reprint for you here:
> "Going outside for a day and leaving the phone fully off in the back of a drawer is good fun for the whole family, and can be done. Getting Tails onto a USB stick is easy for many and even fun for some, and you can make copies for your friends. Getting that old brick phone out of the other drawer, getting the old charger for it, and taking that out sometimes when you only need calls, can be good fun too."
I could have continued with loads more small things "ordinary people" can do:
- use F-droid totally, or as much as possible, instead of the "Play Store"
- if you manage to stop using the Play Store entirely, sign out of Google entirely on your phone, nothing bad actually happens when you do
- delete Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc etc
- have boardgame night with friends, and have a "phone-box" ready, with rules, fully off, it goes in the back of a closet for 3hrs
- buying a little standalone mp3 player for offline walkies with your dog (or lover)
- use ebooks and such on airplane mode, getting books onto them by other means
Etc etc. The point isn't that everyone wants to do these things, the point is they're easy, and mostly a good laugh, and every little helps in the fight back against the normalisation of constant surveillance. So why would we ever tell anyone, "oh, it's pointless, do nothing"?
The problem is government surveillance is useful. If your car gets stolen for example a plate reader camera can help find it.
I think people know that and weight it against the trade off of decreased privacy and exploitation by corrupt government officials or other nefarious actors. To help justify that people come up with ways of gaming the systems, similar to with say people who cut coupons get that money saving rush. Essentially it's viewed as a necessary evil and folks leverage mechanism to get ahead instead of all out rejection.
> There is really very, very little you can do to avoid government surveillance, and in the end it's almost entirely pointless.
I disagree. It's true that, if you are a person of interest of any reasonably powerful government, there isn't much you can do at all.
However, the sort of surveillance most people should be concerned about is an automated one. It isn't really possible for a government to track all their citizens and flag everything, no matter what tech they use. You want to make it difficult for tooling to figure out information about you (no matter what it is) and force government to actually invest resources if they want to figure out something about you, specifically.
When it comes to the US, a lot of information is stored at the state level. That is a lack of centralization that can be exploited.
> tracking device in your pocket that you feed all of your personal information to, data brokers
Not all of them do. If you are concerned about that, some are more privacy oriented than others. 'Dumb' phones still exist - although their use probably makes you stand out already.
There is a lot people can do to limit their footprint with respect to mass surveillance, and much of it is in the article. There are now more concrete reasons average people in the USA might need to worry about that, such as helping someone from a restrictive state get an abortion.
That said, I think it's important that we do try at least to corrupt that data set any way we can. I've got my local member of congress (and apparently other political organizations) thinking I'm a middle aged person of color; I'm not. Always falsify your information whenever possible and feasible, including tagging other people in photos as yourself, etc.
There is no way to avoid surveillance, government or private, but we can do our best to screw with the data.