People are very adaptable and will consider all that things new normal. XIX century Americans would consider an income tax in a peacetime grossly inappropriate, creepy and a violation of their dignity after all.
And the more or less permanent state of war we find ourselves in could also be considered a new normal we've adapted to that XIX century Americans would find creepy and grossly inappropriate.
Anybody got an ideas, on what we are supposed to do when that happens
Move to the next of the four boxes, though ideally before it happens. We need to advocate for important civil liberties and reasonable limits on the power of the state, but we do also need to then act according to that advocacy ourselves, for example by voting for people who take these issues seriously or funding legal actions to challenge excesses. A lack of public awareness of these issues and the potential implications for normal people's everyday lives is a big part of the problem, and as coldtea suggested above, shifting the Overton window is going to be crucial to improving the situation. It just needs to shift the other way from where a lot of the authoritarians in power today are trying to push it...
> Anybody got an ideas, on what we are supposed to do when that happens
only few things you can do (in that order depending on how bad it escalates),
0) start to learn about prepping and live a more unplugged live
1) flee and take refuge in a place that others call "backward"
2) take up arms and defend yourself
#2 will get you labeled a terrorist (though so was Count Stauffenberg)
Who's gonna take them? Remember that couple in Houston that put the hurt on a swat team. It doesn't take many events like that to really dampen the enthusiasm for kicking down doors (especially when you're doing it to simply confiscate property). The cops are subject to the same risk calculations as any other home invaders.
Due to a sad trilogy of events at the end of last century (specifically Episode 2: Texas BBQ) the ATF of this century mostly conducts stings and information based enforcement (i.e. nabbing people for buying Glock switches online). Were they to go back to kicking down doors of people who are generally considered normal patriotic Americans they would A) be more likely to get shot back at than any other agency (much easier to justify and mentally prepare yourself to shoot back at career snake steppers than your local PD) and B) have some really, really bad optics to contend with.
If you're worried about someone taking your guns be worried about the state police.
Start a “counterculture network” of onion-routed hidden services (not necessarily Tor, but something akin). Some element of steganography would likely be required to prevent government-controlled ISPs from simply dropping encrypted traffic, most likely.
It would be hard and would likely attract only technically-minded individuals to use.
Better than that, build an anonymity network with both mixing and onion routing, and full padding with chaff. And implement it as drive-by malware, with worm capability. Like WannaCry. It'd be basically a huge botnet. And it would use a covert channel in HD video, which would provide enough bandwidth for text, at least, and maybe images.
That way, participation by servers and clients would be plausibly compulsory. Both because it would evade protection, and because sympathetic admins and users could "accidentally" let it install. And that would provide plausible deniability.
A plausibly deniable user interface would be the hardest part. It'd probably need to self install, and then securely delete itself after use.
> It would be hard and would likely attract only technically-minded individuals
... and police forces: a nice feature of leaving a few gaps that motivated users can use is that the police can focus its limited resources on the those interesting targets.
This is going to be an unpopular opinion but I'm hoping someone can explain why I'm wrong.
I actually would really welcome online activities no longer being anonymous.
I feel like a large part of why people on the internet are so terrible to one another is that there's really no accountability because of the anonymity.
This is true in many areas including hate speech or posting illegal/inappropriate material.
I suppose I don't know if I think it should be LAW that requires everyone be deanonymized, but I do wish people on the internet would treat each other closer to the way they do in real life.
> I feel like a large part of why people on the internet are so terrible to one another is that there's really no accountability because of the anonymity.
Sounds plausible until you consider that many of the worst comments are written by real people logged in using their real Facebook accounts -
... and some of the best forums online don't demand anything but a username and password like here.
IMO real name policies are way less effective than some people want you to think, and they'll effectively prevent certain minorities from participating in online debates.
"I'm hoping someone can explain why I'm wrong." The answer is in your own words: " I suppose I don't know if I think it should be LAW".
I suppose you are right: you don't know. Many people know for sure that they think this is a bad idea to put in place such a law.