Z:gnu-www-ja-free-digital-society--fdd1d5-We can stop our own computers/en

We can stop our own computers from doing surveillance on us if we have control of the software that they run. But the software these people are running, they don't have control over. It's nonfree software, and that's why it has malicious features such as surveillance. However, the surveillance is not always done with our own computers, it's also done at one remove. For instance ISPs in Europe are required to keep data about the user's Internet communications for a long time, in case the State decides to investigate that person later for whatever imaginable reason.