Why is it so hard to just build machines that work without all this ideological bullshit? Code doesn't care if politics==true. The world is scary enough without you assholes making modern life a data minefield for even the most educated experts, and taking advantage of the ignorance of everyone else. Fuck you.
I just wanna <look at web pages> without having to consider, counteract, or silently assist some fucking regime. Why is EVERYTHING this way? Everything is a back door or a data mine or a political statement? This isn't a fucking art piece! It's not your espionage tool, fucking codes in invisible ink and tiny cameras and shit everywhere! It's a <web browser>, and if it does ANYTHING besides <browse the web> that I didn't explicitly tell it to do, you better better not be the one who made it. Because if you did, you are what's wrong with the world.

I can get behind this movement. I feel so much like a pawn in a bigger game that I just can't affect - no matter how many guards and protections I put up.

Technology is so wonderful and enriching and empowering, but like everything that has existed before it, it is but a tool for the rich and power-hungry (and mad) to use to exploit the little people.

You can't imagine how much I agree with this. Very nicely said.

@runfrodorun Yup. This. Exactly.

@SISheogorath No offense, for real, no offense but what does this add to this rant?

I like thinking that espionage has always been like this, it's just that today we are much more aware of it thanks to technology.

Think about it, during medieval times a powerful king obviously had a spy network; they were always hearing stuff behind the walls, getting information from town flok. Fast forward a little bit, and in the 18th century there are still spy networks working for political powers. I'm pretty sure there has never been a way to ensure privacy and completely secure the information we create, it's just that today we create so much information and we have so many ways to share it that there is a branch of espionage that had to evolve to spy on the huge amount of information political powers want to keep track of.

Now, the difference is that today, through technology, we have the means to protect our information much more thoroughly, and share privacy violations openly. So there may be some hope for us to make our own means of sharing/storing information securely :)

@DVZ96
It's a nice thought, but it's wrong, because it fundamentally misses the point: Privacy is no longer in our control.
Nowadays if you write a note in your (electronic) journal, it can be taken without the journal leaving your pocket. And most people have no way of knowing this, and even more people can't do anything about it without sacrificing a terrible amount of convenience and basically becoming amish.
Espionage has never been like this. It has never been this devious, widespread, difficult to contain, and so invasive that it is contained in your own material possessions.
Even a private conversation in the living room now has to worry about bugged tvs, phones, alexa, heck, did you hear about those guys who checked their microwaves for cameras, or about how snowden would throw a blanket over his head while he worked? That level of paranoia would be completely unjustified back then. A man's home is no more his castle. But that's another rant.