What dystopian surveillance things from your country you can't escape? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago by PiraHxCx@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Or have to go through great lengths to escape.

In my country you can't buy any medicine without showing your ID... I mean, you technically can, but if you are registered they "give" like an 80% discount, so everyone thinks it's a great deal, not realizing that's the normal price, they are just pretending you can still go and buy a simple cold medicine without sharing your ID, phone, email, and street address with the drug store and whoever they decide to sell that information to, you just have to pay absurdly more. Yeah, you can lie about all the other information, but not really about your ID number. Probably soon, to get the "discount", you are going to have to verify your email or phone number as well.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] freedickpics@lemmy.ml 46 points 2 days ago

You have to hand over a huge amount of personal info about yourself & others to estate agents when renting a property - which they then sell to advertisers & you have no opt-out
Similarly, landords can require you to use a proprietary app for rent payments, which of course collects & sells your private data too
Burner phones are effectively illegal (telcos are required to collect & retain ID of every phone number they register)
Telcos and ISPs are required to collect & retain logs of all your activities for a minimum of two years
In some cities police can detain & search you & your property for no reason, and require you to remove any facial coverings
It's illegal to refuse to hand over passwords to cops (6 years jail is the max term I think)
Police can hack your device, take over your social media, delete or modify your data for an investigation, or survey any digital device if they "think it is likely to be used by someone subject to a warrant" (this particular bill was announced and then rushed through parliament in less than 24 hours to give the public as little time as possible to protest it
Some social media sites (including github(wtf)) are now required to age-verify all users beginning next month. Which will obviously lead to mass leaks & breaches of private data which the gov will turn a blind eye to

This is Australia. I hate it here

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 29 points 2 days ago

being punished for not giving your phone password to police sounds insane

[-] Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 days ago

Over the ditch here, New Zealand isn't much better and like many countries only getting worse. The insane amount of personal information that essential companies (e.g. electricity, property managers, etc) is getting out of control and our digital privacy laws are still in the dark ages.

[-] Auli@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

They want it all the data so they can sell well taking all your money. It's insane capitalism is broken and we the people should be revolting instead of just accepting it. If people only knew how much data they had on us.

this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025

99 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy

43392 readers

632 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS