A surveillance state was always inevitable once wireless networking, GPS, and cameras were ubiquitous. If you say this isn't true, show me anywhere in the world with these technologies that is not headed down this path.
Secret courts still exist but the phenomenon of random Flock employees spying on children in locker rooms at gyms is so much harder to get away with in a system with a modicum of decency.
Chat control was actually shot down, and that was the UK not Europe (anymore).
Laws are different in different places. The world is not composed of America and other-Americas.
It got vociferous support from the highest levels of government even though the deception ("protect kids!") was so blatant and transparent, and it wasn't until a legion of privacy and in particular tech-literate advocates raised concerns in mass media together with an awareness campaign about the dangers of unchecked surveillance structures that it was finally... shot down.
We have seen the same, or substantially similar, bills come up over and over. Most of the time, they are shot down, in the same manner you describe.
But sometimes, there is a 9/11 and the Patriot act gets passed.
how does one politically organize against a billion dollar industry which is friends with, and donates to, the ruling class?
they do whatever they want and we just post about it online and click 'like' or post emojis.
You're mixing the places of horse and cart here - the ruling class is ruling because it's organized. Organization comes first, the presence of other organizations, be them ruling or not, has little bearing on the process.
> we just post about it online and click 'like' or post emojis.
That's what you do without organization. It still helps though, getting to the truth isn't easy these days.
At a deeper level, I think people would need to care more about the outcomes and higher order effects of political decisions and not just the emotional weight of political slogans. The fundamental problem is that is not the society we live in.
Lei Dongbao, party secretary of a small village, is courting the owner of a restaurant in a nearby city. He persuades her to let him care for her young son over the weekend.
As he's heading back to his village on his motorcycle with the boy seated behind him, he drives by some women resting in the shade by the side of the road. One of them remarks to another, "Why does the secretary have a child?"
By the time he arrives at his office, all of his subordinates - and one of their wives - have turned out to meet him and say hello to the child.
https://www.basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2019/9/...
> Citizens, on the other hand, don’t like red light cameras because they don’t want to be fined. They complain that the cameras are an invasion of their privacy. I don’t buy that because I grew up in a small town, and as such I understand that privacy is a myth.
"Resistance is futile" is an old slogan of them Borgs.
Revolutions in most countries have generally replaced one faction of the ruling class with a competing faction of the ruling class, with little actual change for the people.