No. Everyone believed the stories about Echelon and the mandated at&t "wiretap room" and so on and so forth. The situation is pretty similar as of today, in fact. People just put that into the back of their heads where they can ignore it and continue writing their HN post.

And the most sensitive personal and business emails continue to be sent in clear text. Without the sender usually even thinking twice about it.

The official 9/11 story being a farce has been an open secret almost since the event. There are hundreds of verifiable facts that don't fit the official narrative.

eg?

What happened to WTC 7? There is a 45k+ bounty for any credible refutation of the University of Alaska Fairbanks study:

https://ine.uaf.edu/projects/wtc7/

http://westviewnews.org/2020/01/09/engineers-pledge-45000-re...

It's interesting how the Surfside condo collapse looked like a controlled demolition too. It wasn't, though. I think it's just how buildings are built to collapse, and they down that way regardless of cause.

You can tell the condo thing had no BS surrounding it because, well, the television showed footage of it from every angle and actually analyzed, as opposed to the piss poor confusing coverage and engineering analysis on, say, the Vegas shooting.

Not a 9/11 truther, but there are some incongruities around official accounts of 9/11, for example the accounts of why CIA staffers actively blocked the FBI from being informed about the activities of future 9/11 hijackers, as discussed in the documentary "Who is Rich Blee".

There's a morass of conflicting stories, but if you're interested you could start with a close look at [1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfreda_Frances_Bikowsky

Intelligence agencies have used all the recipes in the book to take a hit at each other, so there is that as well.

I remember laughing at the presented passport from one of the alleged culprits shortly after.(Like a day, or even hours? Can't recall exactly anymore) Found blocks away, only slightly burned at some parts of the corners. Seemed surreal and staged to me.

edit: Also, in hindsight, after having been sensitized to the topic in general, the fact that there were exercise/drill/training/simulation operations running at the same time and place where terror attacks hit.

WTC7

that's not an answer.

what specifically about that building? in what way do you disagree with the "official" narrative and what is your proof of your counter-narrative and what is your evidence that was suppressed?

Most normal people, whom you will not find on hacker news, will think you a tinfoil hat wearing lunatic to suggest anything remotely like mass surveillance being real in ky experience.

The problem in my experience (with say a typical < 25 year old) is that they just don't care. Really. Like: "So what?" "Watch all they want, they can see me on TikTok."

It has become normalized and it doesn't connect with something undesirable.

Unfortunately this seems all too plausible, and it really is too late to have a society that allows privacy imho.

why the downvotes?

I didn't downvote you, but, to me, your claim very much does not match up with my experiences. Regardless of political affiliation or age or location - even before Snowden - most people probably wouldn't find it very crazy or implausible, and a lot would say it's quite possible or likely. Post-Snowden, I think you'd be seen as the crazy one if you thought it wasn't happening.

At least if we're talking about surveillance in the sense of "when you call someone or are called by someone, the phone numbers and length of the call are automatically recorded in a database, and everyone's unencrypted internet traffic is collected and/or automatically and manually analyzed by the National Security Agency". If someone says the government put microscopic hidden cameras in everyone's home ceilings, then, yeah, they'll probably be seen as pretty crazy. (A bit less so if they say they're just tapping the cameras in phones / laptops / smart TVs.)