[snakeyjake]

>I suppose the second learning is to elect governments which respect democratic freedoms, even if that puts them on the back foot.

Democratic freedoms, in the United States at least, protect people from UNREASONABLE search and seizure.

Compelling a third party to reveal information about a customer via a court order is not now, has never been, and will never be until the end of time and space, unreasonable.

The order itself might be unreasonable and should be challenged if so, but the procedure and ability to do so is not and will never be.

[dragonwriter]

> Compelling a third party to reveal information about a customer via a court order is not now, has never been, and will never be until the end of time and space, unreasonable.

Its unreasonable if the standards for issuing the court order (as applied, even if not in theory) are unreasonable.

And that is often now, and has often been, and will often be (likely until the end of human history), unreasonable.

[matheusmoreira]

Yeah. This stuff is all about putting an end to the global mass surveilance dragnets. Police and government should still be able to operate of course, with checks and balances.

They should not be able to push a button and learn everything about a person. If they want to learn about an individual's private life, they should have to get a warrant then put people to work on the guy's case. They should have to literally follow their targets, photograph them, put hardware keyloggers into their keyboards. That sort of hardship imposes natural limits on the scale of their operations: there are only so many police officers you can assign. With computerized dragnet surveillance, the scale of their operations is essentially limitless.

These encrypted communications services aren't generally in the business of going to jail in their customer's place. They gotta comply with the government laws. When a court orders them to do something, they either obey or they are held in contempt of court if not worse. It can't be helped. It's still helping reduce global surveillance by forcing them to target their attacks.

[sonicanatidae]

>Democratic freedoms, in the United States at least, protect people from UNREASONABLE search and seizure.

You're conflating what's written in the law and the sad reality of how a lot of that is simply ignored by law enforcement, while they are standing on your neck, searching your car.

[anone9462]

Pretty fun, that precisely for you "standing on neck, searching car" is REASONABLE search and seizure, not for him. Pretty expected.

[sonicanatidae]

Standing on anyone's neck, while searching their car without a warrant or probable cause is a problem, for everyone. I'm not even sure why I have to clarify this, but ok!