Unfortunately from what I see in history it's not usually until people are having trouble feeding their families that the people seize power back from government and short of that nothing will change. Ideological movements not related to our Maslow's-hierarchy-of-needs do come up and cause change but they're the exception and I'm not holding my breath.
HN crowd is more enlightened than most and I still see widespread hook-line-and-sinker consumption of 100% corrupt corporate media narratives on here.
The idea that this data can be collected and kept safe at all is fiction. Even if the legal framework is in place to prohibit selling or misusing it there will always be bad actors and compromised employees willing to subvert any controls you care to implement. Even something as simple as hijacking phone numbers happens at massive scale because both call center and retail cellular employees are so easy to fool or buy off.
FWIW I agree with you on corrupt corporate media. Consolidation has put a vast amount of media in just a few people's hands. Those extremely rich people don't want anyone telling them what to do and have bought a lot of deregulation especially of campaign finance so they can use the purse strings to control policy.
In the US the political parties used to have a tighter reign on things because they were the money funnel and party leaders were at least subject to party elections so at some level politicians who didn't do something to advance the party platform approved by the party's members would lose funding. That whole system has more or less been smashed to pieces. Politicians need to make the supposedly "arm's length" PACs and other groups happy. Groups directly funded by a handful of very rich people. Voters at large and within the party are less and less relevant.