[eanzenberg]

Its been 1.5 decades since the patriot act of the same rehashed tropes and fear mongering. Most citizens accept the high level surveillance for high level hackers and criminals. The fear of ‘they’re going to track Joe Schmoe to a strip club and ruin his family life’ hasn’t come close to materializing. Call us when it does. Until then, the dialog between elite tech bubbles like hn or slashdot of 15 years ago and the rest of the country won’t be productive.

[slg]

This is the point the tech community needs to focus on. If we want the general public to care about these issue, we need to communicate the repercussions in ways that doesn't just allude to the ideals of "freedom" and "privacy". You need concrete examples of how this can and will go wrong in the short term for normal law-abiding citizens and they need to be scarier than "the government will know your porn searches" which clearly hasn't motivated anyone.