> I don't want to give up, and I don't want to check out. I like my shiny devices and assistants now, they make my life easier in little ways all the time. How can we balance that with the basic human right to own our data and retain our privacy?

You can't. If you want to have the security of a democracy, you have to accept the inefficiencies of a democracy (as far as the power structures are concerned, it's pretty analogous to the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy).