The Safer Internet Lie: Why More Surveillance Isn't Making Anyone Safer
Try this experiment. Go sign up for a porn site in Texas, open a new messaging app in the UK, or apply for a driver's license in an EU country rolling out its digital wallet. In every one of those cases, in 2026, you're going to be asked to prove who you are before you're allowed to do the thing. Not because you did anything wrong. Just because you showed up.
Now, try a different experiment. Go find the guy running a ransomware operation out of a bulletproof hosting provider in a jurisdiction with no extradition treaty, paid in Monero, routed through three compromised VPS boxes and a stolen AWS credential. Ask him for his ID.
That contrast is the whole article. Governments have spent the last decade building an impressive amount of new infrastructure to identify, verify, and monitor internet users, all justified by cybercrime, child safety, fraud, and...
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