It's amazing how in 1999 OP was worried about UID=Big Brother, but today we've all willingly handed over security and privacy to 3~5 companies, even without talking Facebook, Google or Amazon. Jeez, did everyone forget LexisNexis? They were doing this way before FAANG. But it's game over: there is no more privacy or security. We lost, they won. I give to EFF every year, but it's more and more futile every year.
I remember a time when people circulated lists of software that phoned home calling them out as spyware for collecting nothing more than our IP addresses. These says everything wants to connect to the internet. The EFF is still one of those groups I have no reservations donating to, but yeah, it feels like we're only going in the wrong direction.
Irrelevant now with the switch to ARM, but still pretty interesting they out and out state it.