[xyzzyz]

What's wrong with mandatory encryption?

Some people say that it uses too much computational resources, for instance. Others complain that mandatory TLS increases latency by one additional RTT. Mandatory TLS is a biggest point of conflict at the IETF discussion about SPDY being the HTTP successor (at least from what I heard), though many sides disagree for evil reasons.

Do you still use rsh to log in to your servers?

Does this question add anything of value to the discussion?

[harshreality]

Those people are living in a fantasy world where governments or ISPs do not care about what their citizens or customers are browsing and are not doing wholesale traffic proxying/collection. In that fantasy world, it's rare for companies who should know better to serve login pages over insecure connections.

SSL also prevents doing MITM to serve malicious content to browsers to exploit browser or plugin vulnerabilities. Universal SSL would mean attackers would have to get you to visit their site, or a site that includes content that they control.

[jrockway]

Does this question add anything of value to the discussion?

Yes. If you are the "I hate encryption because it messes with my tinfoil hat" type, you'll get all angry and not reply. For anyone else, the question is just a minor annoyance to wade through ;)

[xyzzyz]

If you wonder whether your disputant may be tinfoil hat type, the exploratory questions to verify this conjecture may make your disputant not want to discuss with you any longer, because it's kind of distasteful.

[jrockway]

That's why I added a smiley face at the end.