It's not the governments that will be your ruin. It's your curious neighbors, people you pissed off, corporations, marketers, social networks, criminals, crooks, malicious types, perverts, gossip spreaders, blackmailers, and identity thieves. Your privacy is gone, and it's not the government that's taking it.
I did not know that FBI and NSA all are thieves, criminals, crooks, perverts and blacmailers.
The average gangbanger and drug dealer are not trying to pass laws of backdoors and data retention. It is FBI CIA NSA and learned elders of zionism who are behind all this mass surveillance and nanny state.
If you're a normal person, then nothing you do is interesting. If the algorithms cough up something that it thought was interesting, then the people look at it. Then, again, if you're normal (i.e not some Boston bomber), then the person dismisses it.
Did that prevented Boston bombings? Did that stopped Breivik. No. And realistically it would not. And that is not even the true purpose of such surveillance. Total control and elimination of all dissent is what this surveillance is all about. With such total control no revolution or deviaton from official party ideology will be possible.
Every single rebellion could be identified and crushed in early stages. Even before the rebels would start thinking about disobeying their supreme leaders.
Then why are they not crushing us now? Algorithms not evolved enough?
The government largely is a bunch of lazy ass pension seekers. Go to the dmv if you want to see government in action. The governments of the world cant keep people feed.. they screwed up and let the people get the internet uncensored.. there are open drug markets online if they cant stop that how are they going to do shit about anything. It is just a matter of time. Governments of the world are not going to get stronger they are going to shrink to the point that no one cares what they do. Every bit of wealth held in digital currency or gold or silver is a nail in the coffin of the state.
This is a view I like. Mainly because it offers an easy-to-implement principle of action towards governments: ignore them.
I wouldn't worry so much about this. Yes, the Government(s) is (are) watching. They probably try to get as much Data on every single person as legally(?) possible.
But, all this Data is collected by government agencies. Do you really think the same guys that mess up every single project they touch are even capable to put all this data to use?
There is not very much to worry about, not because they respect your freedom (which they don't) but because government paid lazy bureaucrats are to incompetent to use this data.
Also every government funded agency always grows and grows, gets more expensive and continuously inefficient. Now they start all this projects and in 10 - 15 years we will see headlines like this in the press:
You've got balls of steel. I wouldn't bet the well-being of the world on a certain large group of people with force on their hands not encompassing enough competence to identify their opponents.
Government internet surveillance costs the Taxpayer 30 Billion the year and has not stopped a single terrorist act
Maybe it's not incompetence or failure of method. What if the terrorist acts weren't
supposed to be stopped? What if they were even manufactured?
The vast majority of people here can probably agree that "big brother is bullshit".