The truth is that NATO should be dissolved

Seconding this recommendation. Story of Your Life is the best sci fi story I’ve ever read

You might like Steampunk Prime: A Vintage Steampunk Reader, edited by Mike Ashley.

By the way, the sad reality is that many of the good sci fi stories have flat prose. It’s just something you have to accept.

Very well. Since privacy is irrelevant, give me your full name and address. I promise I won’t report you to ICE.

If you think you can organize a resistance to fascism while being surveilled 24/7, be my guest. The only thing you’re doing by being a stupid doomer is discouraging people from taking proactive steps towards better privacy. Surveillance is what kills our freedom of speech, assembly, and petition.

It’s funny how much people deny that privacy is the foundation of freedom when every tyrant knows it. That’s why they set up surveillance systems.

No, the state can’t just do that. They could do it to any one person, but not to everyone. Consider this hypothetical: the state wants to kill 100 people. If everyone is outside, this job becomes easy. If everyone is in their homes, this job becomes harder. Why? Because breaking down doors, moving equipment, etc. costs money. And government agencies don’t have all the money in the world! They can’t:

1. Go after every single person who uses cash
2. Go after everyone who uses a vpn
3. Go after everyone who uses encrypted messaging
4. Go after everyone who attends a protest and who wears a mask and puts their phone in a faraday bag.

Privacy works best in a larger group. Telling people privacy is dead actually hurts you more than telling people that there are indeed effective steps you can take to protect yourself.

Encryption requires no respect from the State

Keeping your google account can be helpful if you want to follow this strategy:

1. Register on Signal using your phone number
2. Port your phone number to google voice ($20 transfer fee but free after that; additionally while its privacy sucks, google is great for security)
3. Change the settings so that every caller is sent to voice mail
4. Use mysudo and cloaked for VoIP numbers
5. Set up Signal on a new device (ideally a grapheneos pixel)
6. Use a calyx institute hotspot for data or buy a sim card with cash

Socialists need to learn to stop being dogmatic. If a Marxist-Leninist revolution is our most viable solution, democratic socialists et al should back it. If democratic socialism is more likely to succeed, Marxist-Leninists should back it.

Your number one step is privacy. Privacy is the foundation of freedom; it “protects the right to be left alone”.

If you’re a beginner, Naomi Brockwell’s videos have very good tips. If you’re not a beginner, read Michael Bazzell’s book Extreme Privacy. Read it in full and decide the level of privacy you want (you likely will not need every single one of his tips).

No, don’t use Telegram. Chats aren’t end to end encrypted by default, you have to specifically request a secret conversation. It’s also not possible to encrypt group chats on telegram. Matrix, signal, session, simplex, and many others are much better.

Yes, people should have that, but it’s not that simple. Some liberals, particularly classical liberals, think a free market would bring those things to everyone. I don’t necessarily disagree, though I think free markets can only ever be free under communism/socialism, not capitalism. The issue with centrally planned, universal healthcare is that a hostile government could refuse to provide you care, much like insurance companies that don’t approve coverage for many things. Additionally, there needs to be strong medical privacy protections.

This is to be expected as Russia needs true security guarantees to end the war.

Use an SLNT bag

Just when will my human rights, which are grounded in the constitution, stop being put aside by bullshit rulings ad absurdum

Also, this is why you should use a privacy screen.

This is already the case.

You can opt out of TSA facial recognition and CBP facial recognition

The part of the patriot act giving the cia etc warrantless phone search powers on Americans expired and wasn’t renewed. It’s why the CIA and NSA fight really hard every time Congress renews the part that allows them to surveil foreign/international phone calls.

Additionally, governments want security and privacy too. The navy invented TOR, for example.

Nothing to hide doesn’t mean everything to share. When it comes to id verification specifically talk about:

1. how storing millions of IDs will be a tempting honeypot for hackers, making data breaches much more likely and much more common.
2. how these companies will become a digital playground for traffickers searching through leaked IDs, looking for potential trafficking victims.
3. how these laws could lead to stalking, harassment, and get people murdered or raped.
4. how these laws could escalate political violence in a society already divided and rife with polarization. Having access to someone’s address, searching their address on Google Maps, seeing a political sign in the yard is political violence waiting to happen.
5. how these laws could very well lead to someone committing suicide after their ID is leaked and posted, which led to them being stalked or harassed.

When people doubt you or accuse you of paranoia, concern trolling, or fear mongering:

1. Remind them about the Tea app incident (in which 13,000 IDs were leaked and posted online) and ask what if Facebook, Instagram, or Reddit is next?
2. Tell them: Don’t underestimate hackers and don’t trust these companies to delete your information.
3. Tell them: Don’t underestimate what people are actually capable of and the kinds of ideas that go through people’s heads (there are some really bad people and really unhinged people in the world).
4. Even accuse your politicians and lawmakers of backing or being behind human trafficking rings if you have to to let them know how serious these risks are.

Also remind them that wanting surveillance to make sure everyone is following the law is bad because not all laws are good! Civil disobedience is a powerful tool against tyranny and we must protect it. I don’t want a society where no one breaks the law.

Here’s a script you can send to your state legislators and governor:

I demand a state medical privacy law at least as strong as the Minnesota Health Records Act (Minnesota Statutes 144.291-.298). Here are seven types of disclosures that HIPAA permits without patient consent or knowledge, but which generally require patient consent in Minnesota:

1. Disclosures of health information for treatment purposes, unless consent is not possible due to a medical emergency.
2. Disclosures of health information to other providers for healthcare operations purposes. [Note: healthcare operations includes over 60 nonclinical activities, including business activities. According to Federal Register, Vol. 75, No. 134, July 14, 2010 (see pages 40872, 40906, 40907, 40911), your medical data can be shared with over 2.2 million entities, including 1.5 million business associates, without your consent or knowledge.]
3. Disclosures of health information to payers for payment purposes.
4. Disclosures of health information to outside researchers for medical research purposes. [That’s right, non-consensual medical research is explicitly allowed by HIPAA, but greatly limited in Minnesota.]
5. Consent of a patient’s authorized family or legal representative for disclosures of health information to funeral directors.
6. Disclosures of health information for military or national security purposes unless the disclosure is specifically required by federal law.
7. Disclosures of health information for law enforcement purposes, unless the disclosure is in response to a valid court order or warrant. [That’s right, under HIPAA, medical providors are permitted to share sensitive health data without a warrant.]

Source: Mayo Clinic’s Notice of Privacy Practices (link: https://www.primarycareondemand.mayoclinic.org/notice-privacy-practices)

Minnesota is the only state to have a comprehensive medical privacy law stronger than HIPAA. [State] should be the second.

Relevant article concerning this topic: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/can-the-u.s.-government-compel-states-to-enforce-immigration-law

You’re daft if you think its something anyone cares about after 20 years of implementation.

The reason it’s taken 20 years to implement (and actually, it still hasn’t technically been implemented, since we’re still in the initial enforcement stage) is because people cared and still do.