Reply to post: New (old?) means of investigation needed

New (old?) means of investigation needed

So the reasoning goes like this:

1. People encrypt their communication to enforce their privacy from the government. Since the government has no business in their communications and expresses interest in protecting the privacy of people that should be perfectly well.

2. People expect that encryption will protect them from a government who stops expressing interest in their privacy.

3. Government who likes privacy can't check up on the groups who don't like privacy (and use violence to impose their will).

4. Groups who don't like privacy use the privacy shield of encryption to undermine the privacy-loving government.

5. The anti-privacy groups take power one way or another. They then use violence to make everybody who uses encryption to go to jail or die.

6. Groups who like privacy have no means of undermining the privacy-hating government.

With privacy the bad guys who want to subjugate you can't be spied on - people have to risk their lives infiltrating their circles, but you know that if the bad guys are in government they can't spy on you. Without privacy you don't know if the bad guys are in government and spying on you, and people "get disappeared" all the time without a trace and no indication of who did it.

The only solution then is to strengthen democracy and make government as transparent as possible so that when shit gets around to point 5 they get dealt with quickly and a proper government elected back in.

What the EU, May, and other national governments say is that they're not bad guys and promise they'll never be. Strong democracy would on the other hand mean that getting to point 5 is a possibility, but after a small period of tribulations point 6 is averted rather than set in stone. Human nature says that there's no way to ensure the people in power will never be bad guys.