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.
That “old-fashioned police work” IS very often communications monitoring. I have no problem with you saying a search warrant should be necessary, after all. Focus on the breaches of trust by the government institution for which you have some level of oversight, as opposed to providing a safe harbor for all nefarious communication in blanket form. It is thus not unreasonable to have Telegram provide some semblance of moderation and oversight to filter out obviously-nefarious, illegal activities while permitting the rest to pass-through uninterrupted. Communication isn’t wrong; demonstrably criminal communications, such as child sex trafficking communications, are. To think how many murders and sex-trafficking incidents were caught by the monitoring of communications following a warrant.
Let’s instead focus on the transparent institutions moderating what is illegal to curb government overreach as opposed to providing a blanket safe-haven for mold to propagate. This is basically the Silk Road all over again, and for good reason that too was shut down.
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.
The government, when Democratic anyway, is a reflection of the people. Quite literally the etymological root of the word. We are fortunate to live in a time where when such a western democratic government does something wrong — particularly in France — the people can demand change by way of riot or vote. By extension, such laws were drafted in representation if not direct referendum by the people. In other words, the extension of this CEO getting arrested on France soil IS the will of the people. And if the will of the people demands a degree of security and resources to inhibit crime, then so be it.
I wonder to what extent encrypted communications permitted (or would’ve exacerbated) the likes of the Charlie Hebdo attack in France. I’m pretty sure 99.99999% of all communications the average citizen does not need to be secured beyond the capacity of a search warrant to reveal.
You’re right, it should not be easy; but it should also not be impossible when necessary.
