There are overwhelming dichotomous portrayals in this debate which gives me pause because there are entities who benefit from both sides of this debate, but neither would benefit with a sensible privacy-preserving solution.

So instead of advocating for those sensible and workable solutions, the discussions are always centred on either blocking any attempt at reform while hyperventilating about vague authoritarianism or a similarly vague need to protect the innocent.

Meanwhile in the world of smartphone data providers, social media networks, and the meta/googles of the world: they all know your personal information and identity up to the wazoo - and have far more information on every one of you than what is possessed by your own governments (well except for the governments that are also buying up that data.)

So let me be clear, the gate is open, the horse has bolted - recapturing your privacy is where attention should be focused in this debate... even if it's bad for shareholders.

> Meanwhile in the world of smartphone data providers, social media networks, and the meta/googles of the world: they all know your personal information and identity up to the wazoo - and have far more information on every one of you than what is possessed by your own governments (well except for the governments that are also buying up that data.)

This is where I'm concerned too. We are seeing a proliferation of third party verification services that I have to interact with and that have no real obligations to citizens, because their customer is the website.

I'd like to see governments step in as semi-trusted third parties to provide primitives that allow us to bootstrap some sort of anonymous verification system. By semi-trusted, I mean trusted to provide attestations like "This person is a US citizen over the age of 18" but not necessarily trusted with an access log of all our websites.