What is MTEC?
Time to Read: 4 min
"What can I do?"
That's the question that many people have been asking themselves in 2025, and it's one that I have been thinking about a lot as it relates to digital privacy, security, and consumer rights.
For many years we have been living in an uneasy status quo. If you cared about digital or consumer rights and you had the know-how, you could find a way to solve your own problems in a world that did not want to help you. Maybe it was learning about Linux to escape Windows Recall. Maybe it's finding a genuine battery to keep your otherwise good condition laptop running. While there were many areas where we couldn't do much, we were comfortable with the state of the world.
In 2025, many assumptions have been upended. Here are just some of the headlines that got my attention.
- The UK Online Safety Act has introduced age verification over many commonly used websites like Bluesky, Twitter, and Reddit
- The "Kids Online Safety Act" has reemerged, which would bring age verification across the United States, co-sponsored by our US Senator of Florida Ashley Moody
- CBP flew drones to help ICE 50 times in the last year
- DHS is using facial recognition technology
- Digital locks are being used by vendors to keep people from fixing their own property or helping others get theirs fixed
- Our governments continue to get more comfortable with surveillance cameras that can be accessed on a whim
- Age verification is trying to become the law of the land in many states, chilling free speech and expression
- EU working to break encryption for everyone in the bloc through Chat Control
The right to privacy has been attacked so much this year. What am I supposed to do? Who will save us from this? I figured someone would. And yet I, a big nerd who follows cybersecurity news regularly, missed that fact that our own state of Florida already passed a social media ban that would require age verification.
The answer is that no one is coming to save us. Big tech's interests are misaligned with our own. Governments are either naively or maliciously looking to erode privacy and consumer rights. As it gets worse, the surveillance state continues to grow, making it harder and harder to one day escape. All that will need to happen next is for the surveillance machine to be turned on the people, which some in the West are already experiencing. We are not that far from being trapped entirely.
What can I do? Brother, I'm not sure, but I have to do something. In the midst of all this chaos and danger, I need to bias toward action. Thus the Miami Tech Enthusiast Club (MTEC) was born.
There was another timeline...
At the start of this year, I just wanted to hang out with people. Literally, I was chatting with some friends about tech and thought to myself, "gee, it would be awesome to get to know other nerds around me so that we can hang out in person and talk about how cool this stuff is."
The original intention of MTEC was to provide a space for nerds to hang out on a regular bases and just geek out. That was it. It was about connecting in my local community around a topic that I couldn't find a community for.
That is still the goal! I'm not letting a bunch of bad news set me back from wanting to foster community if there is interest. So we're hanging out because that is still a neat thing to do.
What's the plan?
The format of the group is to meet on a regular basis, hang out and just have a good time for 80%, and then get organized for 20%.
The part where we just geek out is self-explanatory, but how we get organized is where hopefully we can be helpful to our broader community in Miami.
Why organize? Well, if we don't care enough to get organized and advocate for change, who will? We're the nerds! We're maybe the only ones who care! The issues are so complicated for most people to follow, even though the impact to their freedom is as foundational as censorship or political retaliation. We as nerds need to stand up for the digital and consumer rights of ourselves, our families, and our community.
To that end I want to emphasize Miami, not just because we live here, but because other groups will not. It's easy to talk about these issues, but many times we think of them at the national level and not the state or local levels. That's how things like state age verification laws pass without anyone noticing. The advocacy that we do needs to include South Florida and Tallahassee.
We also need to understand what specially we are advocating for. If it wasn't clear already, this group will mostly focus on the ways that technology inhibits our freedom, which normally implies the right to privacy and the right to repair.
In future blog posts I hope to cover specific goals for the club and what our values are so we can be on the same page. Hopefully none of this is coming across as super complicated because it's what we have been feeling for a long time.
Here's what you can do
MTEC is a club dedicated to fostering a local community in Miami who are interested in technology while facilitating advocacy for digital and consumer rights.
You can join our club and hang out! In addition to that we can learn how to organize against the powers that be that are seeking to take away more and more of our freedom through technology.
Join our Signal group to get in touch and come to our next meeting, or feel free to email me at joseph-mtec@tutamail.com.
You can also share this blog posts with friends and family who you think feel similarly. Help spread the word!
Regardless of what you do, keep up your hope.
Written by Joseph, Organizer for MTEC
Wants to see the world get better.
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