Internet surveillance is driving me back to 1990s computing | Marcus Coetzee
Internet surveillance is driving me back to 1990s computing
Article on #Personal, #Technology.
By Marcus Coetzee, 26 June 2026
A few months ago, Facebook suspended my account and claimed I broke the terms of service. I post about birds, nature and the occasional hillwalking photo, to about fifty friends, roughly once a week, for five years. I also post photos of cups of coffee. When I appealed, Facebook offered to reactivate my account on the condition that it could take a 3D scan of my face.
I refused. I would rather lose five years of online interactions than hand my biometric data to a company with Meta’s track record. I find this idea of linking facial scans to social media accounts to be ominous. It was also a good incentive to let go of Facebook, as I’ve done with other platforms like Instagram and Reddit, which had become too addictive and were wasting my time. But this event also highlighted an emerging pattern worth describing.
1. The pattern of increasing digital control and surveillance
Here are some components of this pattern I’ve noticed, either through my cybersecurity studies last year or through paying attention to what’s happening around me. I tend to notice and obsess a bit about patterns, as I’ve outlined in my recent neurodivergence essay.
Each piece of policy sounds reasonable on its own and is marketed as being good for society. But when combined and put into the wrong hands, it can create something very dystopian. I’m wary because I believe that all governments, regardless of ideology, have a tendency to accumulate power and control, and to embed decision-making in the organs of state rather than in democratic processes, and therefore need to be kept in check. I saw how the state gained and maintained power while living in South Africa during Apartheid, and I see similar sentiments gradually taking hold in Western countries in a way that concerns me.
The UK has announced it will bar under-16s from major social platforms from early 2027, with adults required to verify their age through some form of age verification or age assurance, such as an ID upload or facial scan, to prove they are not a child. While the first part seems attractive, it is the second part that worries me.
Furthermore, Australia’s under-16 ban is already in force, and a peer-reviewed study published in the British Medical Journal on 25 June 2026 found it has made no meaningful difference to teenagers’ behaviour. Daily social media use stayed the same among 12-13 year olds, and only dropped modestly among 14-15 year olds. Most users were still on their own accounts, and 66% of them had already been asked to verify their age by the platforms and found a way around it anyway. The system failed to achieve what it set out to do, at the expense of increased state control.
California now requires operating systems to collect and pass on a user’s age at setup, though mainstream Linux distributions have won a court exemption for now. I fear that this operating-system-level channel can be adapted for more nefarious purposes since it is the foundation on which other software runs. It also seems a good time for me to learn how to use Linux again.
A surveillance bill currently before the Canadian parliament gives police and intelligence services expanded power to compel telecoms and service providers to identify users and hand over data – these powers are so extensive that they have gained international attention.
The UK government is also moving toward restricting VPNs. In January 2026, the House of Lords voted to ban VPN provision to under-16s as part of the Online Safety Act. On 16 June 2026, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told the BBC that the government would make further statements on VPNs in July 2026. The minister responsible has stated there are currently no plans for a general VPN ban, but a government consultation specifically asked whether children’s access to VPN services should be restricted. This is moving fast, and in one direction. Millions of Britons downloaded a VPN the moment age verification started creating friction last year, and now the government is discussing whether to age-gate VPNs too. I think it’s unlikely that the government will be able to enforce this without borrowing tactics from authoritarian regimes, since there are several workarounds, and people will simply move to less regulated VPNs. Even the Mozilla Firefox browser now comes with an in-built VPN – a new feature it introduced in early 2026. Banning VPNs will have a disruptive effect on the economy.
Then there’s Apple. In January 2025, the Home Office reportedly ordered Apple to provide access to encrypted iCloud backup data for any Apple user worldwide. Apple refused and withdrew its Advanced Data Protection feature from the UK entirely. In other words, Apple’s device encryption in the UK is weaker than elsewhere. The law bars Apple from even...