Why are you so outraged now?

It didn’t even begin with the Patriot Act. I would say that the DMCA started this madness all. Remember, Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested for and jailed for allegedly violating the DMCA. After that happened, if people would have done what’s right, Adobe would have simply gone out of business. Let’s repeat this: at this point just by not buying something, not even leaving your house, doing anything dangerous you could have sent a very strong message that you do not tolerate such transgressions on your freedom. Changing websites, calling your representative and such actions are absolutely ineffective when companies own Congress. Hurting companies is what matters. Nothing else. But, you didn’t boycott Adobe then or after. Photoshop is too important for your business.

By December 2001, the TSA was introduced, you needed to take your shoes off, knives were banned and laptops were to be X-Rayed separately. You could no longer walk to the gate unticketed. But, this was accepted – and gladly by many. So the TSA step by step introduced more silliness (banning lighters later reversed, liquids later relaxed) but even when full body scans were introduced people accepted it. The right thing to do at this point would’ve been to mass stop flying and tell, in a physical mail, to your airline why you are not flying. The TSA would’ve been dead in a month. But you didn’t do that, it was too much of an inconvenience to not fly. Family needed to be visited, conferences attended, work to be done. I understand…

Facebook was even more so the textbook example of creeping normalcy. Even seeing this evolution you didn’t delete your facebook profile because it was important to keep in touch, however superficial that touch is.

In 2006, the AT&T NSA spy room is leaked by Wired. Once again, did you and millions of others cancel your AT&T account, again telling why? Nope. In all these cases, all people needed to do was to accept some inconvenience.

All for the above, and countless others you didn’t need to put yourself in physical harm’s way. You wouldn’t been arrested, beaten up, thrown into jail. Noone asked you to enter the trenches with a musket. Nope. The absolute worst could’ve happened is a loss of job which is of course horrible but also you just couldn’t be bothered, it’s not too important, isn’t that so?

You have sent a signal at every possible step that you will close your eyes, close your ears and will not do the slightest thing to protect your liberties, why indeed you will voluntarily throw it away – so why are you surprised that the government have interpreted these signals in the only way possible and pressed forward?