Trust Revolution

S02E06 – Privacy's last stand

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September 2025 marked a critical turning point in the surveillance economy. Disney paid $10 million for illegally collecting children's data. Google faced $425.7 million in penalties for nearly a decade of smartphone tracking. Microsoft cut off a military unit for using their tools to surveil civilians. While corporations face mounting fines and compliance nightmares, governments worldwide are accelerating digital ID mandates—offering a false choice between corporate surveillance and state control. From cryptographic proofs to peer-to-peer networks, the alternatives exist right now. The question is whether we'll adopt them before the surveillance trap closes.

Key Highlights

  • The September 2025 Reckoning: Major enforcement actions against Disney ($10M), Google ($425.7M), and others signal the surveillance economy's breaking point
  • The Digital ID Trap: How governments worldwide are using corporate surveillance failures to justify centralized identity systems
  • The False Binary: You're being offered corporate surveillance OR government control—but cryptographic alternatives eliminate both
  • The Compression Effect: Privacy regulations squeeze corporations while governments offer their surveillance infrastructure as "relief"
  • 19 Episodes of Solutions: How every Trust Revolution guest has been showing us privacy-by-design alternatives that actually work
  • The Personal Playbook: Five concrete actions you can take this week to reduce surveillance exposure and resist digital ID adoption
  • The Fork in the Road: Why your individual choices in the next 6-12 months will determine whether surveillance infrastructure succeeds

    • Resources

    Privacy-Preserving Communication Tools

    • Signal - End-to-end encrypted messaging with no metadata collection
    • SimpleX Chat - Anonymous messaging with no phone number or identifier required
    • Nostr - Censorship-resistant communication protocol
    • Tor Browser - Anonymous web browsing

      • Privacy-Focused Browsers & Search

      • Brave Browser - Privacy-first browser with built-in tracker blocking
      • Firefox - Open-source browser with strong privacy extensions
      • DuckDuckGo - Search engine with no tracking or profiling
      • Brave Search - Independent search with no user profiling

        • Financial Privacy & Sovereignty

        • Bitcoin - Decentralized, permissionless digital money
        • Lightning Network - Fast, private Bitcoin transactions

          • Your Action Items This Week

          1. Delete one surveillance app - Replace it with a privacy-respecting alternative
          2. Learn about one privacy-preserving technology - Zero-knowledge proofs, Bitcoin, Nostr, or secure enclaves
          3. Have one conversation about digital IDs - Make someone aware of what's coming
          4. Resist one unnecessary data request - Don't give information websites don't actually need
          5. Subscribe to Trust Revolution - Stay informed as we continue covering alternatives
            6. ...more
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            Trust RevolutionBy Shawn Yeager