An Urgent Warning About Your Privacy

Posted on by Dave Stucky

In the past five months, I haven’t prioritized my writing projects. However, recent political events have provoked me to add my opinion to the public dialogue.

But, for Parental Alienation Awareness Day, it’s also right to provide a status update for my family.

In 2024-09, my wife and our two children, ages 4 and 7, lived together in Des Moines, IA. Victoria staged an event to provoke me to anger. For the first time in my life, I violated my principles through anger-based physical violence against her. She then kidnapped our two children and disappeared.

I have moved on, the courts have now exonerated me, and I am rebuilding my life.

The day after my last post, she filed for divorce in South Carolina, and I found out in late January. She misstated in her filing that it’s illegal for me to contact them. Beyond defamation, she may commit perjury within the next six months.

If the justice system lives by its name, I’ll soon gain at least half custody of them. Since it’s a legal battle, I won’t know until I see things happen.

This month, Victor and Mia turned 9 and 6, respectively, and I still haven’t seen or heard from them. Please wish it to them on my behalf if you’re reading this and know them.

How I Feel

Up to 60,000 American parents experience kidnapping every year, so this isn’t that uncommon. I have finished grieving my lost wife and children now. It took me 19 months, but I have arrived.

Even in this situation, I’m grateful. My circumstances could have brought me to utter bitterness, ruin, and brokenness. God, however, used this felix culpa to break me free from my hypersensitivity to lying and deception. He has given me better reasons to live.

Even within severe hardship, God promises He’s in control:

  1. He’ll trade rest for our problems (Matthew 11:28-29) and strength for hoping in Him (Isaiah 40:31).
  2. Even when we stumble, He plans our steps and holds us up (Psalm 37:23-24).
  3. In my specific situation, He is the Father to the fatherless (Psalm 68:5).
  4. He holds the judge’s heart in His hand (Proverbs 21:1), and demons tremble at His name (James 2:19).
  5. God isn’t really “slow” to His promises, but patiently wants everyone to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).
  6. He has bigger plans for His glory and my good (Romans 8:28).
  7. He is faithful to finish the work He started (Philippians 1:6).
  8. He will work it for His glory and my family’s good (Romans 8:28)

He always knows, irrespective of anyone else. This is His problem, so it’s beyond my authority, and I am simply waiting to see Him act.

Victoria has custody of Victor and Mia because God permits her to have them right now. It’s also His power that would return my children and restore our lost years (Joel 2:25). Since He always plays the long game, I have nothing to fear.

What I’ve done

I haven’t sufficiently kept track of what I’ve published publicly. When I have time, I’m pushing out things that I’ve at least drafted.

I’m getting good feedback on my essays, and I can now hold myself to a higher standard than ever before.

First, geeky things on Gained InSite:

A special geeky Gained InSite breakout series:

And other geeky things for Christians on my Theologos Site:

I’ve also restarted an ongoing weekly podcast called the Philosominute. You can view it on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, Bluesky, Rumble, No Authority, and Truth Social.

I don’t expect I’ll ever be an influencer, but who cares? I like doing it, and it has more meaning to me than this week’s sportsball scores.

What I’ve observed

You may have heard about Britain’s crackdown on social media or Apple destroying British citizens’ lives by forcing them to enter their age. But, if you’re like any real ‘Murican, you must be thinking, “Those limeys musta drank too much tea and gone bloody mental. No cap, but we’d throw hands if homeys were philistine enough to enact such a gnarly force majeure!”

However, we do have some privacy risks coming to the USA. If you haven’t heard, age verification is in the news. The government plans to require someone to enter their birthdate into the computer itself. Congress has just presented a bill that has bipartisan support because Democrats promise more Government and Republicans promise safe children.

While Microsoft is a lost cause, there are important, geeky battles underway on how Linux distros should implement this, since government-mandated requirements are an indirect violation of the open-source philosophy.

Why it matters to me

Entering your birthday as some made-up number is simple enough, but this move is a very real risk to privacy.

Firstly, a birthday today sets a precedent and approach for other data points, such as a name or a government ID number.

Second, most people will be honest about their birthdate. Accessing quite a bit of your modern image only requires your name, birthdate, and last 4 digits of your Social Security number.

The issue here is a bit like gun control. The laws oppress law-abiding people but won’t take care of the deviants who don’t follow the rules.

And, beyond some point, more rules create a type of civil resistance through noncompliance. History shows that otherwise law-abiding people will start breaking rules to maintain their way of life. Everyone and their grandma bought alcohol from the mob a century ago, for example.

We shouldn’t light our hair on fire over this, but we should certainly stay alert about it.

What I also think

This whole issue, however, alludes to a more direct philosophical problem regarding privacy.

The right to keep information undisclosed (i.e., privacy) is an implicit right. However, it requires us enforcing it for it to work. If we were transparent, we must keep being transparent to avoid looking suspicious.

The U.S. Constitution also doesn’t explicitly state anything about privacy. All we have is the Tenth Amendment. I highly recommend you read it in its entirety, since it’s almost too long for an X post. It distills down to “anything we didn’t cover goes to the states or the people”.

Our modern conundrum

We’re not really trending the right direction. Our right to nondisclosure is slowly disappearing, and will only magnify as technology validates Wagner’s Law:

  1. We have just recently seen a minor-ish brain implant allow someone to operate a computer and form words.
  2. At some point, this signal reader will become a non-implant sticker or headset (and research is already underway).
  3. Naturally, this technology will also gather plenty of internet-based biometric data. Smartphones send that data everywhere, so this would be a whole new level of tracking. The US and EU are already agreeing to share more biometric data.
  4. If a signal is traveling to control a computer, they’ll be able to read other signals people send. This includes what someone may want for dinner, or a philosophical question, or a hidden belief.
  5. Eventually, like with all other information, someone will reverse-engineer a signal traveling out to send a signal in.

I expect every privacy problem to become much more complicated in the coming years. I don’t have a clear answer to this. I’ve focused so much on seeing the problems that I don’t know the solutions. However, I can legally talk about it, so that’s all I have.

What I’m doing now

I’m in a new career and lifestyle shift, and God is taking me somewhere beautiful.

In my free time, I’m working on several things:

  1. Something like 50 essays when the spirit of the thing strikes me.
  2. A significant de-hoarding project to whittle down my commonplace archive and toolbox
    • ~16 scrawled notes of various stuff
    • ~65 quick article piles
    • ~1283 not-so-quick article piles
    • ~265 new notes I plan to write
    • ~477 things to read or throw out
    • ~70 undigital books I might read
    • ~3000 other things I’m going lalalala to and pretending don’t exist until I deal with the rest