I work in tech and can say tech people can and do get very political, including with the tech itself. How often I need to try to debunk my co-workers misconceptions about… well… the world… it’s exhausting.
Also, privacy advocates aren’t usually saying USA = good. They are usually very suspicious of the US, or any government, almost to a conspiratorial level. Many are libertarians or conservative liberals/Trump folks who dislike basically any government anything.
Even the code written by developers holds the biases of the company within it. Where data is sent and received from, how algorithms feed information to people, who hold backdoors and who are the primary clients of a tech entity, it is all politics.
Many are libertarians or conservative liberals/Trump folks who dislike basically any government anything.
You will see them calling Snowden traitor and Assange a Russian agent, on first sight. Cory Doctorow and friends did something really bad to Naomi “SexyCyborg” Wu as far as privacy is concerned.
What you describe are nuances that go a lot deeper. Nuances where algorithms may favour white males, backdoors that lead to 5/9/14 Eyes and Mossad, encryption key holders that are more than just the ones public are told, ideologies that make up the core of companies whose products we use and so on.
You will see them calling Snowden traitor and Assange a Russian agent, on first sight. Cory Doctorow and friends did something really bad to Naomi “SexyCyborg” Wu as far as privacy is concerned.
During my time as a class traitor in military intelligence it was usually those folks I was surrounded with then who were referring to Snowden and Assange as traitors and spies and so forth. I was in during the height of all that. However, most privacy advocates praise them, and in some cases further their causes by involving themselves in the Linux open-source world, the EFF, Tor, Privacy International, decentralized application development, etc.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I never said nor meant to imply any sort of structure or effectiveness from the various privacy advocacy orgs, just that many tend to be distrustful of the government.
I work in tech and can say tech people can and do get very political, including with the tech itself. How often I need to try to debunk my co-workers misconceptions about… well… the world… it’s exhausting.
Also, privacy advocates aren’t usually saying USA = good. They are usually very suspicious of the US, or any government, almost to a conspiratorial level. Many are libertarians or conservative liberals/Trump folks who dislike basically any government anything.
Even the code written by developers holds the biases of the company within it. Where data is sent and received from, how algorithms feed information to people, who hold backdoors and who are the primary clients of a tech entity, it is all politics.
You will see them calling Snowden traitor and Assange a Russian agent, on first sight. Cory Doctorow and friends did something really bad to Naomi “SexyCyborg” Wu as far as privacy is concerned.
What you describe are nuances that go a lot deeper. Nuances where algorithms may favour white males, backdoors that lead to 5/9/14 Eyes and Mossad, encryption key holders that are more than just the ones public are told, ideologies that make up the core of companies whose products we use and so on.
During my time as a class traitor in military intelligence it was usually those folks I was surrounded with then who were referring to Snowden and Assange as traitors and spies and so forth. I was in during the height of all that. However, most privacy advocates praise them, and in some cases further their causes by involving themselves in the Linux open-source world, the EFF, Tor, Privacy International, decentralized application development, etc.
EFF was silent during Cambridge Analytica. Amnesty is known for its funny shenanigans. There are a lot of things that go in, it works like spaghetti.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I never said nor meant to imply any sort of structure or effectiveness from the various privacy advocacy orgs, just that many tend to be distrustful of the government.
The fact that you can see these things distinctly is already a sign you know what is going on. It’s all cool.