[no_opinions]

Why not focus policies around using the surveillance tools?

The tools should be as powerful as possible. To keep people safe, shouldn't infrastructure be powerful enough to tap anything instantly with proper authorization, even backward in time? Why not?

Then we're focused on making rules better. Isn't that the best thing to do in a system of laws and standards?

Imagine if you could change any aspect of the system to make it more proportional, fair, ethical, whatever. Why not think about asking the right questions, weighing the pros and cons, and tailoring a way to improve it with minimum side effects?

Also, sometimes the regulations are so strict, it's dangerous.

For instance, here's an example where the rules around stingrays being so strict led a guy to get away with murder (in eyes of the judge):

> Circuit Judge Yolanda Tanner said in court Monday that while she is suppressing the evidence “with great reluctance,” Copes is “likely guilty.” https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/citing-unconstit...

I wonder what it would have been like had that case been in Florida. Which has sweet inevitable evidence law.

[abvdasker]

> The tools should be as powerful as possible.

I think a lot of people would disagree with this premise. The argument against it is basically that abuse of powerful surveillance technologies is inevitable precisely because the technology is so powerful. In reality, law enforcement is only incentivized to catch criminals, not necessarily to protect people's privacy or personal freedoms, so LE will abuse these capabilities 100% of the time they have access to them.

A more subtle argument is that bureaucratic oversight of LE is almost always impotent to reign them in and has every reason not to due so due to a lack of accountability. A "fair, ethical" system is fundamentally incompatible with one in which law enforcement has sweeping surveillance capabilities and the lack of oversight which always results from any sufficiently large/slow/complex legal system.

[no_opinions]

> The argument against it is basically that abuse of powerful surveillance technologies is inevitable precisely because the technology is so powerful.

What would be some examples of an abuse?

What would be some examples of a powerful surveillance technology?

For instance, what "surveillance technology" isn't already an internal diagnostic tool for day-to-day system administration for a telecom/service provider?

Only difference is who picks the target and them having oversight (likely having to provide a predicate/rationale). Why is this so bad?

If there's a lack of oversight, what rules and systems would you suggest to prevent abuse, as you define it?

[jimktrains2]

I think that part of the issue is that blank surveillance is as easier than surveillaning a single person used to be.

Also, it is possible to build systems where the admins can access the data or metadata. End-to-end encryption, for example parent the admin from seeing the contents of messages. Systems like Tor also prevent any one person from knowing who everyone is and what's saying. Mutual authentication can also help establish that mitm attacks aren't happening, but that's a slightly different problem than when there is access to the back end of the system being used.