[pmchiu]

"While the liberty movements in the West are busy enough doing good job fighting off the surveillance wave at home, the totalitarian customer segment remains steadily serviced, by the virtue of civil opinion there being discarded and silenced."

That's a bold statement. I agree that liberty movements are fighting. But I don't think they are winning. We've definitely taken a few steps back in recent years. There are more cameras on every street corner and more companies are using facial recognition software to spot people as they go about their day to day business. I don't think that's progress.

[joshuacc]

I don't think the author claimed that the liberty movements are winning, just that they don't have the resources to fight both at home and abroad.

[varjag]

Exactly. That said, any setback of surveillance in the West trickles down to less options available to dictators everywhere. The technology is developed first and foremost to the "home front" of developed nations, as they are the biggest market by far. Thus even local efforts of activists have potentially global impact.