Data privacy, security, and civil liberties issues related to the use of US-based digital services suddenly feel more urgent—and what to do about it

Meta, Google , Apple and other large tech firms are among the gatekeepers standing between privacy and government requests for user data.

Big Tech aligning with the Trump administration matters because its business models rely on surveillance and amassing our personal data.

The companies with the most insight into our lives, movements, and communications are frontline arbiters of our constitutional rights and the rights of non-US citizens.

Backdoors for law enforcement data access became a pet project in Trump ’s first term; his DOJ appointee Rod Rosenstein launched a 2017 campaign to rebrand encrypted communications (and locked phones) as “law-free zones” By 2019 , Trump officials were brainstorming laws and bans against “unbreakable” consumer security measures, like end-to-end encryption.

A White House official told WIRED via email: “ The White House looks forward to working with industry leaders to unlock the Golden Age of digital literacy ”.

Check out Plex or Jellyfin for music and video, Nextcloud for file storage and syncing, LibreOffice for office suites, Affinity Suite to replace Adobe , SearXNG for search.

European Alternatives also has a growing collection of categories listing services from web analytics and cloud platforms to password managers, web browsers, calendars, calendars.