01-31-2021, 01:09 PM
(01-31-2021, 09:46 AM)Einzige Wrote:(01-28-2021, 07:00 PM)nyballot Wrote: If you said that the government was wiretapping your phone in 1999, everybody would have called you a nutjob.
Now if you say that the government is wiretapping your phone, no one cares.
How can Americans sleep at night now or look in a mirror without feeling disgusted and ashamed?
Not only the government. Google tracks your metadata and your smartphone logs your cookies and your Alexa listens to your conversations and your SmartTV measures your viewing habits...
So don't use Google, and don't use a smartphone. Rely upon yourself instead of Alexa, Siri, or whatever (although I wish that such technology were available when my mother had Parkinsonism... and if I have Parkinsonism I might ask "Siri" to "Play Mozart's Divertimento, K 563" as she might have asked Siri to "play String of Pearls". Cut the cable and go to broadcast only and buy your own video disks.
Here's the best defense: be boring. The authorities are looking for people who seem likely to revolt or who are involved in illegal activities such as tax evasion, charity rackets, drug trafficking, and pump-and-dump schemes. If the cops think that you are nothing more than someone who milks cows in a commercial dairy, flips burgers, tends a cash register at a dollar store, or drives a truck, then you may avoid scrutiny. Have complicated financial transactions, and such "flashes lights", "rings bells", or "sounds sirens"... take your pick.
It's like driving a car on I-94 in western Michigan: the Michigan State Police patrol the road, and people who do something unusual, like drive ten miles above the speed limit or twenty below, tailgate, or weave draw attention. So do motorists in distress.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.