S F @itchyappendix - Twitter Profile

the UK government just told Apple and Google: scan every phone in the country for nudity. not just kids' phones. every phone. you have 3 months. or we arrest your executives. Apple already said yes earlier this year. 35 million people woke up one day and had to prove they were adults to use a phone they already paid for. Signal put out a statement today. one line: "nudity today. political speech tomorrow." Here's every time a government built one of these systems and what actually happened: 2001 — PATRIOT Act. passed 6 weeks after 9/11. 3 days after it was introduced it was law. sold as: we need to spy on terrorists. what it actually was: a wish list of surveillance powers the FBI had been asking for for years and Congress had already said no to. multiple times. 2005 — the Bush administration was caught running a secret program wiretapping american citizens with no warrant. no judge. no oversight. the "terrorism only" promise lasted exactly 4 years. 2013 — Snowden. the NSA was secretly collecting the phone records of every single american. not suspects. not terrorists. every person who made a phone call. the law said "collect data related to terrorism." they decided that meant everyone. 2015 — same law, Section 215, used to collect financial records, internet browsing history, and location data on ordinary americans. still called a terrorism tool. 2021 — the entire surveillance infrastructure built after 9/11 was used to monitor Black Lives Matter protesters. domestic activists. people marching in the street. not terrorists. 2026 — "Protect the children." All they need a software update. It has happened this way every single time. they name it after the thing nobody wants to defend. then they point it at everything else.

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