People would be better of putting their bountiful tin-foil-hat energies to use campaigning against the governments that introduce these laws. Writing a letter to your MP is far more meaningful than grinding off the ends of your fingers.
It's all dependent on your definition of meaningful. If you want to be an activist, writing a letter is an excellent way to go about it. If you want a passport to travel sometime during your lifetime but would prefer to not have to worry too much about privacy concerns, writing a letter isn't going to help you much.
I hardly think it's tin-foil hat territory to look at the state of most Western governments and deduce that they are becoming more fascist and less democratic all the time, completely in the name of preventing terrorism. Sanding your fingertips off and writing a letter to your MP serve two distinctly different prongs of a fight against that fascism.
The 'tin foil hat' madness isn't really in suspecting that there are people out there trying to control your mind. It's in believing that wearing a tin foil hat is going to stop them.
