You’re far more cynical than the typical citizen, who Ryder is addressing.

"In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information"

You are correct that the American populace has normalized this already. The fact that this is done without congressional oversight is indeed stunning. Or at least it would have been a decade or two ago.

Most Americans have this kind of thing tuned out, that have bigger issues in their lives.

Everyone knew the NSA spied on everyone, yet Snowden leaks were truly stunning, because no one had evidence of the sheer scale of what the NSA (and collaborators) were engaged in. Wyden Siren was already firing off about that many years beforehand, before we knew the actual truth, so considering his record, I'm also skeptical it'll be "truly shocking" for the average HN tech-nerd, but for the general public, to have evidence of what the government does? Probably will be "stunning", but the one who lives will see.

Or backdooring most major microprocessors (tpm).

Etc?

He is one of the few that is actually looking into Epstein bank accounts movements.

They may have dodged, ducked, dodged the rules while they DOGE'd their way through the government, but not sure if they used RAM trucks while they did it

After we 'fixed' the issue a few times, they BOTH showed up to our office.

Both Named Leslie, born on same day, a few small towns apart, same last name and home phone since they had been married. Back then, SSN were handed out by region sequentially, so one had the last two digits 12 and the other 21.

This is how I view privacy as well. You never know who will be in power and who will access that information in the future with ill intent.

This line of thinking kept me away from the Mpls ICE protests. All of the people that protested had their face, phone, and license plate recorded and documented.

I’m not even afraid of being persecuted by the current administration, it’s the possibility of a much worse administration in the future that gave me pause.

That is, if you frame your argument such that you believe people don’t understand the trade off it allows you to not engage with the fact they just disagree with your conclusion.

And even this assumes that the government can and will protect the data from the various bad actors who want it, something they have absolutely failed to do on multiple occasions.

Source: am Oregonian.

In any case it feels a little like keeping the filibuster around: maybe technically it’s within their power to change the norm, but once unilaterally spilling secrets becomes The Done Thing, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t spin out into a free-for-all.

Plausible deniability is harder than just total protection.