Although I agree that the world is trending towards authoritarianism, with thunderous applaud, it does not spell the end of privacy.

In a world of total digital surveillance, steganography and traditional cloak and dagger spycraft become relatively more useful.

Can you share some more details? I'd like to learn more. Any tools for such spycraft for everyday users?

It's pretty easy to find with a google search, but I'm referencing the "classic" tools of spycraft. Hand-written messages that actually self-destruct (self-immolate), invisible ink, short-wave radio, burst transmissions, leaving physical messages at dead-drops.

While steganography usually refers to the practice of concealing a file, message, image, or video within another file, message, image, or video, it can be extended to the practice of hiding information in plain sight. An example is encoding a message into what passes for street graffitti. Or laying out rocks in a formation that only a drone or satellite can make sense of.

One of the smartest people I've ever met explained to me that more or less all digital communications are compromised if the resources of a nation-state are aligned against you and that the only practical solution for private and secure messages is hiding information in plain sight.

As depressing as it may be, I don't really see a way out. The genie is out of the bottle now and any successful revolutionaries will also have an overwhelming urge to use this technology to cement their power.

Benevolent AIs may be an outside possibility. Otherwise, short of nuking ourselves back to the stone age, I think total surveillance societies are here to stay.

The revolution could be to get off the internet or to use it only for cat videos, go back to using cash, reconnect with local friends only etc etc

CCTV coverage is already high in London, and increasing everywhere. Recognition software (not just facial) is getting quite good.

Cash can mostly be tracked unless you just trade with black/grey market sellers. Adding RFID to notes and mandating readers on cash registers would already be feasible.

Home devices (TVs, DVRs, even fridges[1]) increasingly have microphones and other sensors, so it'll be hard to be sure you're not being recorded even when talking to friends in their living room.

[1] http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a24616/sa...

Like the story of the 40 thieves, maybe the answer is to hide in plain sight. Throw so much data at them that they can't meaningfully process all of it. Fuck! This subthread is making me angry/ier.

I don't see any trends in that direction right now. The institutions of both western democracies and most other societies have proven themselves wholly ineffectual at curbing any of the vast overreach by both intelligence agencies and police.

So it will just happen again. (Meet the new boss, same as the old... Animal farm etc) without all of them being dismantled too. And revolutions of that scale rarely work out well for anyone in the short term.

> I think total surveillance societies are here to stay

We could at least convert them into total sousveillance societies. If regular citizens can't have privacy, nobody should have privacy.

Fuck prison, we need to bring the guillotine back.