Do you give up when faced with multiple related problems?

Longest comment ever incoming!

Cindy Cohn, EFF legend, on Hard Fork podcast:

“I think a lot of it, too, is that I don't think that there is a sense among just users of these platforms that privacy is a winnable fight anymore. I hear so much nihilism and fatalism about this when I talk to people, and they, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, asking them about their privacy practices, and they're kind of like, well, that ship has sailed. Like, the government has all my data anyway. What is the point of trying to fight? I'm sure you get this, too.

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[Yes. What is your response to the privacy nihilists?] I think there's a couple of things. One is that this idea that because your information is already out there, it's all over. Like, if you talk to people in intelligence or in cops, they will tell you that old information has a, it's a very short shelf life, right? So your information isn't all out there because you're continuing to live your life. And so, yes, it would have been great if 10 years ago we'd passed a comprehensive privacy law that included law enforcement as well as the commercial

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entities. That's the first best time. The second best time is today. Because if we can begin to cut the knees out from under this massive data collection, the information will get less and less important and their ability to spy on us will get smaller and smaller. So it's never, I mean, if it were game over, they'd stop spying on us, right? Like, they're not like, oh, we're going to unplug the spying machine because we've got everything we need, folks. Like, that would be a different world than the one we're living in. So one of the things is, like, it's never game over. It's not game over. I mean, it's ultimately game over when you're not live anymore maybe, but as long as you're living, your data is valuable to the, to the government

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and to the companies, and the minute we stop this business model, the better. The second thing I would argue is it's easy to say it's all over and there's nothing I can do if they're not sweeping up your grandma in an immigration raid. But I think it's a, it's a bit of a denial or entitled position to think that you could not care and nothing because what's what's going on there and the nihilism is I don't have to I don't care about this. It feels like too big a fight and nothing will really happen to me or anyone I love if I don't care about this. And I think we're living in a time where that's not a safe assumption anymore. We have to fight for our privacy.”