Fascistic Policies Got 'Normalised' in 'Public Office'. Let's Not Let the Same Happen in 'Tech'.
Is human civilisation already "toast"?
Everywhere one looks these days it seems like assassinations, carpet-bombing, violent assault on peaceful protesters and censorship of mere opposition (or criminalising the attempts to read particular sites) become sort of banal. People got accustomed to that. It no longer gets them irritated.
There is growing risk that people won't just tolerate mass surveillance (sometimes euphemised as sharing data for "hey hi" training), back doors, keyloggers, screenloggers etc.
There is growing risk that people will actively suggest/advance those things as ways to "combat crime", hence desirable.
In due course, people who still value privacy will be cast as heretics, sympathisers of crime, "fringe group", "fanatics", or unrealistic Luddites. I know people who feel almost depressed about this. They're made to feel like there is something wrong with them. Fewer people are willing to listen to them. Sort of like Russians who dare say that Putin's war is dumb and needs to be stopped.
Political discourse typically guides what's "normal" and what "good citizens" should believe/feel. Let's not get to the point where speaking out for Free software gets painted as a national security threat and thus banned.
Seeing the direction taken by the Linux Foundation and the photo ops Linus Torvalds takes with the village pervert who wants to ban encryption, one wonders if the Zemlins et al are already on the same side as serial rapists (like the White House). I am currently suing the Serial Strangler from Microsoft and nobody in the media wants to talk about 1) what he did and 2) the lawsuit against him. That says a lot about society and about the media. █