[core-questions]

The problem is that there's no way for the government to actually enforce this 100% - sure, on the average person, but we have to assume that someone engaged in espionage / terrorism / etc. is going to take additional precautions. The threat doesn't go away by doing this.

[acdha]

Nothing assumes 100% perfection as a requirement. We might not like it but if, say, popular services had a way to satisfy warrant requests that would mean that most cases would be satisfied with a warrant even if a small percentage required something else, just as the existence of very hard to open safes doesn’t mean most criminals use them.

To be clear, I’m opposed to widespread access and would want a warrant at a minimum but honesty compels me to note that there are crimes which would be solved if someone used, say, SMS but not Signal and we should consciously accept that as the cost of not living in a surveillance state rather than pretending it’s not true.

[prpp0ndj]

Yeah you get the majority easy enough. They’re mostly law abiding anyway, so you conjure up as much petty crap to pin on them to justify the police state.

Meanwhile the connected and savvy minority coddle pedophiles and grifters among their lot.

These are not really new concerns or ideas. The context has shifted from “meatspace” to “cyber space”. Generally the old ideas of trust and verify, avoid unenforceable, spurious, overreach still apply.

There’s an interesting parallel to the Pareto principle here, IMO. Society is pushing for more and more policing of the 80%ish and less on the 20%ish.

Wealth inequality, and civil rights inequality, filter into our tech contexts.

Too bad we largely focus on these things in our favored context rather than see it as the general political plight of the masses, as it really should be considered, IMO.