The Personal Computer culture in the SV developed from the counterculture in the valley: https://kbsm.org/technology/california-tech-culture-that-sha... It then hopped on the Free Software movement with redefining it as "open source" while the Internet was booming. And all of that is now being reaped by the corporations the "tech-hippies" themselves helped to create.
The more the behemoth of bureaucracy and total control will grind and (o)press the societies to atomized individuals, the more lone wolfs will crop up.
Passkeys deployment reminds me of a cartel agreement among FAANG without the actual coordination. It's too good of a new tech frontier not to colonize.
> they say, "yeah, ok, whatever, 24/7 surveillance is fine as long as it catches bad people too."
So you should continue the discussion like this: those bad people after 24/7 surveillance have no other option to infiltrate the surveillance caste. That's where things will get really hellish.