S02E06 – Privacy's last stand

Trust Revolution

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