A beautiful read

I now love that I moved my family chat from Messenger to signal several years ago

No :( And when you consider that the only changes currently permitted are the ones that don't mess with the real power behind the throne (the über-wealthy), the answer is extra no.

I am a bit of a broken record on this, but there can never be democracy that won't backslide while we continue with capitalism.

shit that seems to have spread throughout many western democracies.

GrapheneOS has a duress pin that wipes the phone when you enter it, that's conceptually similar

I'm not up with tech as you know, but can't a police officer make someone switch their phone on under threat of arrest?

I mean everything North and South of Sydney is alright.

We are a testing ground for digital surveillance for a long while.

The rich are happy when their wealth is growing, and that happens when the total pie grows, or their piece of the pie grows. The pie stopped growing now the cheap energy runs out, so they know they'll have to start taking more and more pie from the regular folks, and they'll need to organize to keep the ones with a shrinking piece from causing problems.

We don't have to wonder. Samuel Tunick is being federally prosecuted for exactly that. As far as I remember, he didn't even trigger the wipe himself, ICE did while fumbling with his phone when he correctly shut the fuck up after they demanded his pin. They arrested him (a legal US citizen) and charged him with concealing and destroying CSAM material.

According to recent articles, almost 6 months later and the court has just now agreed that ICE lied about the events and evidence they claimed existed. 6 months of his life for getting off a plane in an airport, randomly being detained, and committing the "crime" of wanting his privacy respected on a device he owns.

For those who somehow struggle with the point being made here: Police stopping you, demanding access to your private device, and then railroading you through the system for standing up for yourself is fascism regardless of the nation it takes place in. It's naive to assume police in other countries somehow have more altruistic goals or intentions when they do the exact same things with the exact same rhetoric.