Protesting against something takes a lot of energy, and inconveniencing you only a little (or very much but extremely rarely) doesn't make most people's list of priorities.
Most people are too busy to even acknowledge these issues. When you're barely able to financially take care of your family or when you're too deep in the consumerism game you don't have time for these high level questions.
People are more outraged about the latest episode of Game of Thrones than they will ever be about the current state of humanity and its impact on Nature, the erosion of privacy and freedom, &c.
I feel ask though it's more that our systems became so complex that no one, let alone the lay in that specific tech, are even capable of understanding the consequences and what we're loosing.
It's not unreasonable for a lay person to be told about facial recognition and think "well, it's just doing a better job than what a cop would have done anyway" without realizing that it often does worse than a cop statistically and that unlike a cop, all the cameras can be coordinated so that your movements are stored indefinitely and viewable by anyone, something that couldn't happen when a person was looking at people on their beat.
Ditto with online tracking, it's the extent of the ramifications that people don't think/know about. Even then, there are no alternatives that provide the simplicity of communication that Facebook does, so even after something like Cambridge Analytica, most people don't really have options to move away from without completely changing how they socialize, and to be honest, most people don't understand just how much information they leak even still.
This 100%. Living deep in flyover country, I have heard the sentence in your second paragraph from several people.
And do you know who I blame?
Creators and marketers of AI/ML. People on this site are included in that list.
They are being lauded as the saviors of humanity. Think of all we can learn and do with AI/ML. Nevermind that they're just sufficiently large datasets with sufficiently complicated math problems. Also nevermind where that data is coming from or what it contains.
You won't have to worry about online shopping, because we'll be able to get you your stuff faster! Isn't that great?!
In flyover country, deep in flyover country, away from huge cities, away from tech, people do not understand what data is out there about them and what is being done with it. That is the biggest problem with all of this. They literally don't understand why it's a problem, let alone the nuance of the problems.
Throughout recorded history, people have usually been "ruled" by some form of king, warrior, aristocracy, etc. But it's not like one leader could really hurt or kill every single person in a large society, so the people as a collective shouldn't really need to follow his orders. So why do they?
The simplest answer is, there are a series of trade-offs made when following a leader (or government). You have less autonomy, but you may gain some benefits, such as security, order, direction, and the possibility that they might accomplish some of your wishes. Of course, if the leader controls an army, you could say fear is a big motivator to follow their wishes, but then why does the army follow the leader? Same thing: security, order, direction, accomplishment of wishes, etc.
We all make tradeoffs to live in a society. The loss of most freedoms isn't actually a huge impact to your ability to live your life; even in a highly repressive society, you can still eat, sleep, socialize, which is all most animals need. The idea that your society might be secretly abusing its citizens is troubling, but it's not as bad as, say, a food shortage, or waves of crime. So on the whole, mass surveillance is a minor inconvenience, and not something worth flooding to the polls (or storming the gates).
Fear. Why do people think it is unsafe to walk outside when statistics show us we have never been safer? Why are people afraid of public places when crime is far more likely to happen in the home?
Don't get me wrong, you have all the reasons to fear these things if you live where these things happen, but I'd bet my left hand that most people in 1st world countries ever witness any kind of serious violence.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Fortress-America-Embraced-Abandoned-D...
Now you are asking for not just good nature or enlightenment, but for something more... moral courage.
The sad part is the people who are will be lost forever as we march this ugly walk into the Grest Filters which consciousness seems to tend to do to itself.
The only way to get something like moral courage from the masses is to spread ideas into people's minds the same way religious leaders or propagandists do. People love crusaded and want to be important so will become a part of them.
Put more succinctly: It is the full time job of law enforcement to use these tools to solve crimes. Even if literally everyone protests them next month, if you wait 10 years, people will have moved on with their lives, and it will be implemented anyway.
Here is a concrete example:
Back in high school, a holocaust survivor visited our class. We were told the fundamental difference between the US and Nazi germany was that in the US, you could travel without carrying papers (which meant that people could keep the inevitable failings of democracy in check, since privacy while traveling and meeting people basically implies freedom of assembly and press).
That difference no longer exists in the US in any practical way because technology has obsoleted the legal mechanism of “you can’t ask for my drivers license without probable cause”.
Are you sure this is quite as absolute and one-way as you’re saying here? ID isn’t required by government to be driven, use public transport, fly on private aircraft, use boats, etc. Sure as a practical matter in the US non-car options are not nearly as powerful as in most first world countries, but that’s not a matter of law. And while technology helped create the current state of affairs, it can disrupt it too. The motivation for drivers licenses is a real one of public safety. If self-driving cars mean most people cease manual driving though, the need for licenses will cease as well (and also most of the typical suspicions and justifications police use to pull over a car). That may result in a significant clawback of travel privacy in some respects. Practical is not always the equivalent of legal long term is it?
If the true purpose of a drivers license was public safety there are surely a large number of people who wouldn't be permitted to operate a motor vehicle. Or at the very least we would be required to periodically prove our competency.
The press sold us out. They rolled up, told us they were the forth estate. People are busy so they outsourced their critical thinking about government to experts. The press then proceed to not give half a shit about civics.
