See, that may have held up in the 1930s and 40s, but we live in the country with the most robust surveillance apparatus on the globe. And almost every one of us carries around a fun little brick full of privacy violations with us, everywhere we go, absorbing everything we do and say and buy, and packages it neatly into a form ad agencies and the government can use how they like. And one of those little bricks we call smartphones, why, not only do we carry them around willingly, they’re almost a necessity to get anything done in the modern era. We have surveillance that the Gestapo would’ve had wet dreams about. And, more, all of the largest tech corporations and their techbro CEOs – Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, etc. – are only too happy to kiss the ring and give them unfettered access. To say nothing of the countless other devices spying on you – Ring doorbells selling your data to police departments comes to mind. License plate scanners – even if your car doesn’t spy on you (which, if it was made in the last decade, it almost certainly does to some extent). Your desktop computer has been backdoored by Intel’s management engine or AMD’s PSP for well over a decade – if you don’t think they’ve built in backdoors for the government, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. They can strongarm any company in the world they want, especially ones owned and operated in the US, do you really think they haven’t quietly taken them aside and demanded hardware-level access to every computer made in the last 20 years? With how much the people at the NSA would have wet dreams about that? Yeah, no.
I’m not saying it’s necessarily hopeless. But there will be no Anne Franks hiding in the attic if it comes to that point. They can, in fact, be everywhere, and if the hammer falls it’s going to fall hard and fast, there will be no long continuous search for undesirables across the countryside.
If you want my advice? do as much sketchy-looking shit as possible while not actually doing anything illegal. Use a VPN. Look up Kali and Tails and download them to a Ventoy flash drive. Run I2P (even Tor – but preferably I2P) on your computer. Get Signal. Download the simple sabotage manual, expedient homemade firearms, etc. Do everything in your power to make them look as closely at a complete nothing as possible, and destroy their signal to noise ratio – and tell your friends to, as well. They can collect mountains of data on everyone, certainly, and we can’t really stop that now; but it still takes humans to sift through (AI cannot, yet, do that for them with any meaningful accuracy) – make them look for their needle in an ever-increasing haystack.
Oh they will. You underestimate the average person’s need to comply with the law. If the law says “deliver all the undesirables to the government” then most people will do just that.
Not most people. Most people would do nothing, preferring to not get involved. I think most people know why it’s a bad idea to turn in people in their community like that, but it doesn’t take most people to cause an atrocity. It takes a very few doing very bad things with no resistance. It takes most people to provide that resistance and stop atrocities. I have no idea how much resistance most people will provide today but these are uncertain times.
I take one issue with this, just one.
“They can’t be everywhere”
See, that may have held up in the 1930s and 40s, but we live in the country with the most robust surveillance apparatus on the globe. And almost every one of us carries around a fun little brick full of privacy violations with us, everywhere we go, absorbing everything we do and say and buy, and packages it neatly into a form ad agencies and the government can use how they like. And one of those little bricks we call smartphones, why, not only do we carry them around willingly, they’re almost a necessity to get anything done in the modern era. We have surveillance that the Gestapo would’ve had wet dreams about. And, more, all of the largest tech corporations and their techbro CEOs – Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, etc. – are only too happy to kiss the ring and give them unfettered access. To say nothing of the countless other devices spying on you – Ring doorbells selling your data to police departments comes to mind. License plate scanners – even if your car doesn’t spy on you (which, if it was made in the last decade, it almost certainly does to some extent). Your desktop computer has been backdoored by Intel’s management engine or AMD’s PSP for well over a decade – if you don’t think they’ve built in backdoors for the government, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. They can strongarm any company in the world they want, especially ones owned and operated in the US, do you really think they haven’t quietly taken them aside and demanded hardware-level access to every computer made in the last 20 years? With how much the people at the NSA would have wet dreams about that? Yeah, no.
I’m not saying it’s necessarily hopeless. But there will be no Anne Franks hiding in the attic if it comes to that point. They can, in fact, be everywhere, and if the hammer falls it’s going to fall hard and fast, there will be no long continuous search for undesirables across the countryside.
If you want my advice? do as much sketchy-looking shit as possible while not actually doing anything illegal. Use a VPN. Look up Kali and Tails and download them to a Ventoy flash drive. Run I2P (even Tor – but preferably I2P) on your computer. Get Signal. Download the simple sabotage manual, expedient homemade firearms, etc. Do everything in your power to make them look as closely at a complete nothing as possible, and destroy their signal to noise ratio – and tell your friends to, as well. They can collect mountains of data on everyone, certainly, and we can’t really stop that now; but it still takes humans to sift through (AI cannot, yet, do that for them with any meaningful accuracy) – make them look for their needle in an ever-increasing haystack.
Maybe it’s better phrased as “There’s not enough of them to get all of us”
Oh they will. You underestimate the average person’s need to comply with the law. If the law says “deliver all the undesirables to the government” then most people will do just that.
Not most people. Most people would do nothing, preferring to not get involved. I think most people know why it’s a bad idea to turn in people in their community like that, but it doesn’t take most people to cause an atrocity. It takes a very few doing very bad things with no resistance. It takes most people to provide that resistance and stop atrocities. I have no idea how much resistance most people will provide today but these are uncertain times.