>At any time any company could turn evil, and any free(ish) government could become totalitarian overnight. This is a fact, but also pretty useless one.

Is it isrlsss paranoia when it's happening around us as we speak?

It's strange how we call it "preparation" to spend trillions of dollars on mobilizing a military, but "paranoia" to simply take some best practices and not have the citizen's data dangling around. Its a much cheaper aspect with huge results, like much of tech.

I live in a good neighborhood and I have left my door unlocked once or twice to no consequence. That doesn't mean it's paranoia to make a habit out of locking my doors.

That's all I assert here. Care and effort. I don't know all the subtle steps to take since I'm not in cybersecurit, but we still shouldn't excuse sloppiness.

This is really well-stated, and I'd add that even if you want to adopt the paranoid perspective, it still shouldn't lead someone to flatten all risks until they look the same. In real-world scenarios with real risk (military, firefighting, policing, etc.) real effort is made to measure and prioritize risks. Without that measuring and prioritizing risks the privacy crowd prevented from making real improvement.

Exactly. Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it’s probable. Everything is a risk. Everyone needs to prioritize against the set of risks that can be identified and figure out if they can be mitigated.