It's my impression that the shift from 'basically normal government' to 'authoritarian nightmare', when it happens, tends to happen quite abruptly rather than via the ratchet effect/frog-boiling.
And there seem to be plenty of examples of democracies that have remained basically normal despite decades' worth of policies that libertarian-leaning observers would decry as the thin end of the wedge. I'm open to being convinced that the risk of a policy like this clearly outweighs its benefits, but I think I need a specific causal pathway and/or historical precedent rather than general arguments.
The US is kind of an obvious example of this ratchet effect. The powers that have been given to the executive over the course of decades and consistent moving to the right for decades has led us to where we are now. Similar cases in Russia and China where more power is handed over to a centralized leadership role over time.
I'm not a libertarian or follow the thin end of the wedge belief system. It's a simple observation that governments operate under the idea of growth of power. That is not to say an absence of government or reduction of government is good or better. But to recognize our role in maintain the social contract with the government. Abdicating that role entirely does not improve your life.
The only benefit of this legislation is that VPN's will get a bump in revenue, the web becomes more unusable and critical information gets stored at third parties who become high value targets for hacking. Not to mention these data brokers can easily turn around and begin to monetize this data. I'm not a privacy nut by any measure, but this seems like the most obvious major hit to personal data privacy. Instead of addressing the problem that is being claimed to be resolved, it's just lining another corporations pockets who will sell your data. We've seen this story play out many many times already. but you think this time will be different? I don't think so.
