Call your representative and voice your opinion. Donate to eff and aclu or any other civil and digital liberties organizations, to help them protect our privacy and rights through legal means.
Privacy evasion is slippery slope and it only gets worse.
Take this as your daily or weekly reminder to do something, even if that something is donating just the price of a coffee.
You can find someones property address online - it used to take wuite a bit of effort in the past. Now the effort is on the property owner to protect his privacy - using land trusts or other estate structures.
What is worse is now people volunteer information on social networks. If you dont, your friends do - nullifying your effort.
I am not optimistic either, but i will do whatever i can ti protect my own privacy whenever i can. I stopped using fb, and making an effort to learn estate planning and so on.
Terrorism in the US isn't on the rise (unless we're counting white supremacists marches, which the media doesn't) but the powers that be and their cohorts are still milking the teat and our fears from 9/11 on this stuff. People who have no reason to be scared of any of this also won't stand up to it ('I'm not a criminal so it doesn't matter...'). Also funny that when/if another attack does happen, it will be those of us in blue cities (NYC, LA, SF, etc.) sacrificing our lives even if we're against this stuff and the system as it is.
Fear is a business and some people are making bank. Osama would be proud.
When autonomous cars become ubiquitous, this will increase even to places currently outside of reach.
Based on what? For contentious issues on which most voters are decided, e.g. guns or abortion, you are correct--calling in is unlikely to do anything. If you care about a big-ticket issue, join an organization and do the whole camping out at town houses and protesting local and D.C. offices and filing lawsuits schtick. It's hard, but it works.
For niche issues, however, there is a good chance nobody has bothered to think about it. Congressional offices rely on inbound information to put new issues on their radar. An SLA penning out a letter to the ICE requesting information can start meaningful debate, inside the ICE as well as in the Congress.
Part of why things got bad wrt housing, for example, only the people that had houses raised their opinion in city halls, which led to these people trying to protect their investments, which eventually lead to nimbysm.
I am not a citizen, yet, so i am going through the route of donating an amount i am comfortable with, but in 2.5 years, i will be one, and raise my voice through other channels too.