| > makes the job of law enforcement harder Do I want to make it harder for the law enforcement of the CCP occupation in Xinjiang to do their jobs? Hell yes. Law enforcement of the DPRK (North Korea)? Law enforcement of the Iranian regime? The law enforcement that lynched George Floyd and many other Black, Indigenous, and PoC Americans? What about the law enforcement that seizes people's cash in the airport without charging them with any crime? The Chicago law enforcement who terrorized public housing residents and profited off the drug trade, and operated a secretive detention site at Holman Yards that allegedly operated as a black site, not registering the names of inmates? The law enforcement of Bull Connor who brutalized civil rights protestors? Absolutely, I want to make their jobs harder. Point is not to say that all law enforcement everywhere is bad--but rather, that it is quite often right and just to resist or frustrate the efforts of those who enforce a given law. Just like we have the right to bear arms and speak freely to check the power of unjust government, so too we need the right to secure communications in the digital age. It's good for the government to have to work hard to do their job--it will keep the resourced focused on real crimes that threaten our safety, not political, economic, and other crimes that have no victims. > makes it easier for less sophisticated criminals to get away Up until 2003 (!) it was a crime in some parts of the US to have intimacy in a same-sex relationship--and it still is today in 70+ countries, with the death penalty in 12. In Thailand it is a crime to insult the king, and criticism of the state is criminalized de facto or de jure in countless other countries. In Iran, defense lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was sentenced to 38 years and tortured for fairly and effectively defending clients when the regime violated its own constitution to punish them for political and religious crimes. Here in the US, another woman legal trailblazer, Lynne Stewart, was the subject of a surveillance campaign against her attorney-client communications for passing messages from her client, who was banned from all communication with the outside world under a SAM order, resulting in a 10-year prison sentence. In North Korea, it is against the law for anyone to leave the country without an exit permit, which is not granted to civilians. In Saudi Arabia, women cannot leave the country without their wali's permission via a mobile app. Crossing the border without permission is a crime. In fact, of all types of criminals, political and "morality" criminals tend to be the least sophisticated in terms of financial, technical, and social capital. The rich and powerful, whether or not they are on the right side of the law, won't be affected by this. Someone like Epstein is more than capable of getting E2EE/secure communications, even if he doesn't understand a thing and has to pay a million dollars for someone to set it up for him. The Mexican drug cartels have their own network of cell towers (mostly atop existing towers they have illegally attached to) for their communications. Take that, lawful intercept. But everyday people whose only crime is having a prohibited opinion or identity will never be able to do that. |