“We’ve been well-meaning but stupid.”

Gus Hosein said that to me almost six years ago. He has spent more than two decades with Privacy International, taking on fights against mass surveillance that most people had written off as lost, and winning more of them than anyone expected.

At one point I asked him to define #privacy. No notes, no textbook answer. What came back has stayed with me ever since:

“The ability to establish the conditions by which we are seen, perceived, understood, and how we project ourselves.”

Now read that again with 2026 in mind.

In 2021, the ones doing the seeing were mostly cameras, phones, and IMSI catchers. Today it’s #AI systems that don’t just watch us. They interpret us. They predict us. Increasingly, they speak for us. The question is no longer only who collects the data, but who gets to tell your story.

We also got into something I didn’t expect from a 20-year veteran of #surveillance battles: the case for being free to be human, which means free to be imperfect. And why the polished “better self” technology keeps selling us might be the most boring projection of all.

There’s a lot more in the full two hours. How a failed mathematician ended up shaping global #humanrights policy. Why real progress is built from partial victories. And where the weakest link in the system actually sits.

So were we well-meaning but stupid? And are we still?

My full conversation with Gus Hosein on Singularity. FM, video, and audio: [ https://snglrty.co/4eoSNU0](https://snglrty.co/4eoSNU0)

Gus Hosein is a 20+year-veteran of Privacy International. So to say that he knows a lot about privacy will be an understatement. But his knowledge is not merely academic. Gus and his scrappy team of privacy crusaders have fought the long and hard war while putting everything on the line, over and over again. A war where on a good day you might feel like David facing off Goliath. And yet, time and time again, Privacy International has taken on seemingly lost battles and scored victories from the jaws of defeat. I don’t know about you but to me, these are the kinds of people I want to hang out around, talk to, model, and learn from. The kind of people I want to interview. And Gus is as good an example of the kind as I can ever think of. So I hope you enjoy and learn from our conversation as much as I did.