To everyone paranoid about FB and other social media. Worried about privacy? Don't post stuff you don't want anyone to know. Post the stuff you'll normally tell your friends and family. Adjust who can see it to friends and family only.
That didn't work for Ashley Madison users
CIA has bigger fish to spy on than what you ate for breakfast or that new bulb you bought. So I'm not worried about them. I even have Amazon Dot. Yes that Alexa spy. I bug my friends about her spying on you. (They don't believe she does it.)
There is such thing as cost, complexity, and manual labor required to do mass surveillnce, both at the data collection and cross correlation stages. This is a very powerfull stopper : Some regimes in the last century indeed wanted to establish mass surveillance. What stopped them from succeeding was mostly the fact, that watching meant actual manual labor, and cross correlation meant actual manual paperwork
When the costs are eliminated, i.e. when data collection is automatic and cross referencing becomes automatic too (of GPS, linking your online identity with real world you), this means that the cost of watching you becomes nothing more than nanoseconds of CPU time, which cost peanuts. At this stage, it does not matter what size of fish you are : It takes more manual labor to choose the bigger fishes than to just watch them all
So I'm not worried about them
Most of us do, in fact, break laws or norms (things that might not be defined in law, but are assumed to be norm to such extent that you could be litigated over breaking them) :
- Restoring lanterns and wiring them up without having electrician license (anyone on LG ?)
- Things we do as kids/teens : Underage sex, dangerous games, fist fights, trying out pot and alcohol, trespassing, ....
- Letting our kids run out and about without surveillance from our side (this is an example of norms : In the US you could be litigated over letting your 9 year old go out alone, on the basis of claims that it is dangerous, while in all of Europe and Asia kids much younger go out alone and it is the norm)
There are many more things that could be added to the list. You realise that if each of us had an agent with Black glasses behind our back, who would work according to established rules without being allowed to loosen on anything, 100% of the population would have criminal records by the age of 18 ?
And that is before some sick president is elected in the US and starts doing sick things (and nope, i amo not talking about Trump, i am talking about Nixon). And before considering, that even under Nixon US is much better place to live in than Singapore or Turkey