Mass Surveillance Debate Gets a 25-Year Retrospective
Two threads by Cindy Cohn and Bruce Schneier argued that 25 years of mass surveillance is enough. The comments surfaced a key detail that the surveillance programs began in January-February 2001, before September 11, meaning the post-9/11 justification was retrofitted onto a program already running. One commenter noted the telecom executive who objected was 'instantly framed into prison.'
The discussion also connected to broader infrastructure control themes: the suggestion to build distributed, home-run services that take advantage of First and Fourth Amendment protections got traction. One skeptic responded flatly that governments are just getting started.
This thread matters for founders not just as a policy issue but as a product opportunity. The appetite for self-hosted, privacy-preserving tools is real and growing, and the policy environment is not going to solve the problem for users.
So what?
The market for privacy-first, self-hosted tools is being validated by both the policy failure and the growing awareness of how long surveillance has been running. Founders building in this space have a genuine tailwind. The cynics who say 'nobody cares about privacy' are losing the argument.