I’m not sure I yet agree with that. People can have secure communications; that’s called meeting in person and in a private room. That line gets blurred with intercontinental mass-communication that ultimately is beyond the use of the average citizen and is more frequently utilized to nefarious ends. If the damage outweighs the benefits to society, then clearly a rational limit perhaps should be considered.
Ultimately, what matters is respecting the house rules; and if the house rules of France were broken, why in the world would he travel there?
That line gets blurred with intercontinental mass-communication that ultimately is beyond the use of the average citizen and is more frequently utilized to nefarious ends.
I reject the premise of your argument: secure communication is not more frequently used for nefarious purposes than non-nefarious purposes.
But even if I accepted that premise, I would still reject your argument. The underlying principle of your argument is misanthropy: humans are inherently evil. They will always choose evil, and therefore, they must never have an ability to effectively dissent from totalitarian control.
The dangers posed just by the French government greatly exceed the dangers posed by every single person who ever has or ever will “nefariously communicate” over every communications platform that has ever been or ever will be invented.
Yeah I haven’t committed to one side or the other yet. For me it’s less about misanthropy and more about transparency and accountability. The nature of the French democratic government means it is by extension held accountable to some albeit imperfect extent by the people. After all, the laws are by Transitive Property an extension of the people. But who holds accountable the sex trafficker that cannot be tracked? Conversely we can always say, “if you’re doing nothing wrong, then why do you need to hide it?” An age-old dilemma. There probably should be a reasonable middle-ground between privacy and accountability.
The sex trafficker can absolutely be tracked by doing old-fashioned police work: you spend time, money and energy to infiltrate the network, gain their trust and eventually take them down. But this requires police funding and training.
“if you’re doing nothing wrong, then why do you need to hide it?” An age-old dilemma.
It’s not a dilemma, the answer has been given multiple times: under the rule of law, law enforcement has to prove (or at least demonstrate a strong suspiscion) that you’re involved in illegal activities before they can intrude in your privacy.
But with the advent of mass data gathering and the exemple given by the NSA, all law enforcement agencies dream to change this paradigm.
accountability.
Accountability is something a government owes to the people. It is not something the individual owes to the government or the public. It is not and should not be easy for the government to invade individual privacy.
What “accountability” do you owe when I falsely declare you to be a kiddy diddler? What “accountability” do you owe when the government is the one making the false accusation against you? I ask, and I answer: you owe nothing at all.
