Two things:
The biggest threats are probably coming from private companies and private initiatives such as Google, Facebook because of the extent of the data they gather about you. The most worrying part about these kind of threats is that they can be kept secret and can be passed by just one manager.
These bills are backed up or even pushed by the companies mentioned in the previous point. It's not the result of some crazy politician trying to restrain your freedom on the internet but these bills are very often the result of lobbying. It's because the government is not implicated enough in the internet that this happens. Private interest with (relative) little efforts can go in this breach and push for legislation because the politicians are very mildly interested and think it's not a big deal.
If you want to win this war, it's really necessary to identify the real threats and enemies without any knee jerk reaction of typical internet crowds.
On the other hand, these bills are disastrous and need to be beaten and destroyed with fire. The politicians behind them need to be evicted in November.
I understand the point but FB 'knowing' about you isn't the same as your employer 'knowing' about you. People spend time cultivating a professional persona (via CVs, how they interact with peers at work etc) and all of this could be damaged by an unsympathetic employer seeing a drunken pic on FB (which your friend probably uploaded/tagged).
It's the 'intent' that's different. FB doesn't single people out. Your employer (by asking for FB access) is explicitly singling people out.
What if the government has the power to gain access to all the data gathered by Google and Facebook and every other company?
This doesn't make sense to me. I can use DuckDuckGo if I don't want google to track me. However, I would have to gain citizenship in another country and then move there to evade the laws these bills put in place.
Laws that allow US politicians and their corporate friends to record me, suppress my free speech, and put me in prison for 5 years. A longer sentence time than the man who killed Michael Jackson (4 years). For simply sharing a music file.
Wow, am I missing something? Really, am I miss understanding what you wrote because I don't see how these bills are not the real threat? How can you say Google and FB are the real threat compared to these bills?
I'd bet a shiny nickel that (at least in the US) the worst bits won't be part of any big standalone legislation, they'll be buried in some giant "must pass" spending bill. Nobody will realize the provisions are in there until after it's already been signed.
So when it comes to governmental privacy threats, I think the same ought to hold true- we don't have the power to stop them, therefore we ought to find creative solutions. I don't know where to start, but a longterm solution in my mind involves more than articles on the Reddit front page. How can we indefinitely protect our right to use the internet in the ways that we choose?
If you want privacy, stay off the internet. It's not yours.
Ideally, if privacy is important to a person, then they'll gravitate towards services that cater to that need. DuckDuckGo is a great example, where search is concerned. I'm not saying that this is easy. Unfortunately, I don't think that many people care about privacy unless the lack of it gets them into trouble, and then it is only 20/20 hindsight.
The burden for maintaining your privacy lies mostly in your own hands. I don't expect governments to do anything other than to remove privacy rights, at this point.
