NOTE: There’s no correlation between today’s date and 9/11, this was a topic that came up in a recent conversation.

Tonight on InfoSec to Insanity, we’re tackling a subject that’s been gnawing at me for a long time: the slow, quiet erosion of our civil liberties since 9/11. If you’re old enough to remember that day—and most of you are—you remember the fear, the unity, the flags… and the promises.

But fear has a way of cracking things open. And when that crack forms, opportunists (and governments) squeeze through.

Over the past 25 years, we’ve been told it was all for our safety. That if we just gave up a little privacy, a little freedom, we’d be protected. The Patriot Act was supposed to be temporary. The surveillance was supposed to be targeted. The TSA was supposed to be… effective?

But here we are in 2025:

• The NSA still has more visibility into your life than your spouse does.
• Section 702 of FISA just got re-upped and expanded.
• TSA’s budget keeps climbing while they miss fake weapons in tests 95% of the time.
• Facial recognition is tracking us in public spaces with almost no oversight.
• Whistleblowers risk prison while bad actors in power keep skating.

We didn’t lose our civil liberties. We traded them—unknowingly, silently, and in many cases, willingly. We were sold a sense of safety wrapped in a flag and sealed with the word “patriot.”

The part that pisses me off? Most people didn’t even know what they were giving up.

This isn’t a conspiracy rant. I’ve been deep in the trenches of infosec for 30+ years. I’ve seen behind the curtain. I’ve worked with companies that were breached, advised legal teams during some of the biggest data compromises in the country, and trained thousands in the trenches of cyber. I know what surveillance looks like. And I know how easily it gets abused when no one’s watching the watchers.

So tonight, we’re going live to talk about it. No sugarcoating. No fearmongering. Just a real conversation about the freedom we’ve traded and whether we’re okay with that. (Spoiler: I’m not.)

Join me at 9PM CDT on YouTube for Episode #28: “Freedom Ain’t Free (But the NSA’s Watching Anyway).”

Let’s talk. Let’s challenge the narrative. And let’s maybe—just maybe—start clawing back what we gave away.

—

Evan

Fixing the broken industry, one truth bomb at a time.