The Invisible Panopticon: Why Privacy is No Longer the Default

The world has taken a sudden, dark turn over the past several years.

Governments are pushing for mandatory digital ID systems and demanding backdoors into encryption. The very institutions meant to serve the public are now openly partnering with billionaires and their corporations to build the largest surveillance dragnets the world has ever seen. And they are just getting started.

None of this should come as a surprise to those of us who have been fighting for online privacy for decades. Organisations like the EFF, thinkers like Cory Doctorow, whistleblowers like [Edward Snowden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden), and groups like Privacy International have been sounding the alarm for years. They have documented, in painstaking detail, the steady erosion of our digital freedoms. Yet, until recently, the public has done little to push back.

But those early warnings were just the warm-up. A test of what was politically possible. Now, the machinery of mass surveillance is fully operational and it is being handed to companies with no accountability and zero regard for human rights.

Take Palantir. The company has amassed data on virtually every American and the majority of people abroad. Its systems are abused by ICE and have access to sensitive government databases, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Their AI tools are used to determine who to target in war, including in Palestine, and to track protestors authorities would rather silence.

The CEO, Alex Karp, has openly said:

And our technology is used, on occasion, to kill people.

And chillingly:

Feeling safe means the other person is scared.

These are not the words of a dystopian novel. They are a corporate mission statement.

Meanwhile, people are willingly handing over their entire lives including confidential information to AI systems that cannot even secure their own data. AI agents are on the rise, but they are vulnerable to prompt injection, meaning a single malicious message or webpage could let an attacker take over your computer and your life. Your personal AI assistant is known to be insecure, yet these products keep being rushed to market for profit.

Just look at Perplexity's Comet or ChatGPT's Atlas. You do not need to dig deep to see how fragile these systems are.

And to make it worse, AI companies are now legally required to store user data indefinitely. Why. Because everyone wants your data. And they will justify it with vague appeals to user safety.

Then there is Flock, a company whose AI powered cameras are spreading across the US and starting to appear abroad, including in Canada. 404media revealed that Flock left its systems completely unsecured, allowing anyone on the internet to remotely access and watch live feeds. Fewer than 100 cameras were exposed, but that does not diminish the impact.

With facial recognition and OSINT tools, an attacker could have aggregated footage from all exposed cameras to identify individuals, their credit scores, marital status, professions, and where they grew up. They could watch children playing unattended. And even if these devices were secured, law enforcement has repeatedly been caught abusing access to these systems not to protect public safety, but to target dissent.

We know our governments, especially the US, routinely break international law. Read Edward Snowden’s gut-wrenching blog post detailing just a few of the CIA’s atrocities since its founding. Or consider Chelsea Manning, a whistleblower prosecuted for exposing American war crimes.

Big tech is in bed with surveillance companies. Surveillance companies are in bed with governments. It is a closed loop of power, profit, and control.

Even in places like Europe, where surveillance is more strictly regulated, governments are pushing for encryption backdoors, on device CSAM scanning, and even outright bans on end to end encryption unless you are a government official.

The point is this. We are living in dark times for privacy.

Users are under siege, from corporations, from governments, from systems designed to extract and exploit. The only ones pushing back are small non profits, independent journalists, and grassroots advocacy groups.

Yes, it is grim.

But here is the truth. That may be our greatest strength.

These groups are not confined by borders or beholden to national interests. They exist in every country, connected by shared values and a common mission. They are building tools, spreading knowledge, and defending the right to be left alone, not just for some, but for all.

And they are proving that resistance is still possible.

Nym, Mullvad, Tor, Proton VPN and Obscura are opening the doors to a free and open internet. One that governments cannot block, thanks to resilient technologies like AmneziaWG and QUIC.

More users are choosing to opt out of big tech, turning instead to encrypted email, calendars, messengers, and notebooks. And more companies are beginning to offer privacy-respecting alternatives, finally recognising that trust is not just ethical. It is sustainable.

We are strongest not when we move as one, but when we remain diverse. A distributed network of builders, activists, and users, each advancing privacy in their own way. We innovate in isolation, yet converge on the same principles. We build on each other’s work, acknowledge progress, and push further. We work together to oppose any attempt to infringe on our human rights.

This is not a fight that can be won in a single victory. It is a continuous act of creation, defence, and refusal to surrender the ordinary right to disappear.

And as long as we keep building, we keep winning.