The consumer chooses convenience for skill/knowledge and then complains about the outcome of their choice.

It's wild.

It'S ThEiR FaUlT, I'M juSt MaKinG mOneY. Is such a lame excuse. A real engineer knows ethical boundaries. Get lost.

American citizens are not choosing to be surveilled via Flock.

That is a decision that is being made by billionaires like Paul Graham who fund and profit from it, and authoritarian individuals at police departments and governments who get influenced by the perceived convenience of warrant and subpoena-free surveillance.

I carry a cell phone... and thankfully the Supreme Court has agreed that my location data that comes off of it is protected from warrantless search.

The heart of your argument is that people shouldn't do anything new unless they accept all of the downsides as-is... but that's a moronic argument. Society is built by people doing new things _but also_ working to come up with new agreements on how to manage the side effects of those new things. This is normal and natural.

What's wild is your decision to mock people who want to preserve liberty while advancing technology.

If things go bad then the problem they cause is so huge that nobody is capable of taking responsibility for it. The following is an illustration of what I mean:

Eg imagine if one of these surveillance companies gets hacked. Personal data and the habits of a hundred million people get compromised.

The penalties for this should be enough to make everyone affected whole.

If your neighbor had a secret camera in your home - what would it take to make you whole? I imagine most people would be okay with like $50k (or some other large sum like that).

Are these surveillance companies ready to pay $50k per person? Hell no. 100M * 50k = $5 trillion.

Nobody can afford to pay that much. They either end up going bankrupt or are absolved of this responsibility. Either way, the people affected will not be made whole.