I just don't get it. What is the freaking problem of those directors, trying to rewrite federation into some kind of dystopian tech fascism?
I was annoyed by the first Star Trek movie by JJ Abrams, with those police cops. I was alienated by those anti-android resentments in Picard. I stopped watching Discovery after the first episode, because the main protagonist was sent to some kind of labor prison for disobedience, where prisoners regularly die. I didn't think it could get any worse but just watching the first 10 minutes of Starfleet Academy makes me want to bury the whole franchise [edit: and stopped watching]. Some drumhead court-martial, lifelong prison sentence, violently separating a mother from her child and some goons beating up a prisoner. How in the hell is this the same federation of TNG, Voyager and DS9?
Star Trek is supposed to be the ONE fiction with a positive, utopian view on mankind and the future. I totally get the attraction of dystopian settings but for that I can read some Warhammer 40k novels. This really makes me furious.
Fortunately there is still Strange New Worlds.
Please spoiler me, when this bullshit in Starfleet Academy gets turned around in some twist, because otherwise I will just ignore the show.
There's honestly a good argument that Data arguably had none at all. His status was automatically changed to "property/salvage" the moment that he exercised his rights in a manner that Starfleet found inconvenient, by not wanting to be irreversibly dismantled.
The Enterprise might have treated him as a person, but they were unusual amongst Starfleet for doing so. We know later on, that the Sutherland considered him to be little more than a legged computer, and nearly mutinied against him because they interpreted all his actions in that light. Considering Data's storied history of serving in Starfleet without having the support of personhood the Enterprise crew gave him, it would not be at all surprising if the Sutherland's attitude was the norm, and the Enterprise was unusually accepting, on account of being the best and brightest of Starfleet.