I think you're overestimating how much the public's indifference has to do with computer illiteracy.
That's like saying gun control advocates only argue as they do because they don't understand guns. It's a really silly argument.
It's a completely valid argument in both cases. Banning only the scary-looking guns has no productive effect. And if you ask normal people whether they think government employees should be able to read steamy messages between husband and wife, the answer is going to be no.
Also keep in mind that push polling is a thing. Every time you hear a statistic like "only 27% of Americans oppose mass surveillance," expect that the question was whether the government should be able to tap your phone if it was the only possible way to prevent a terrorist attack that would kill you.
If you ask whether large numbers of government employees and contractors should be able to know everything about your business and sex life if it would have the same effectiveness in catching terrorists as a variety of alternative methods that would shovel fewer tax dollars into the pockets of large government contractors, you get a different answer.
Disagree. The person imagines a constrained government, which would only be reading private messages when there is reason for suspicion. The only time another human would be invading their privacy is in an exceptional situation that happens to others (since they themselves are good), which can be just-worlded to the required degree. And of course mass media distorts their priors to think that suspicion strongly implies guilt - a TV show would be quite boring if there were no wrongdoing.
I suspect tech is so (relatively) resistant to mass surveillance because we've perceived how horribly wrong group dynamics go and, rather than accepting being compliant herd followers, found our own outlets and created our own kingdoms. We are the outliers - we will never have the majority on our side.
That's the point. People who support mass surveillance or encryption bans only do so because they're uninformed (or have been purposely misinformed by others). You teach regular people how it actually works and they change their tune.
On the subject of encryption bans and backdoors, I explained that this would make it easier for them to be the target of hacks and fraud. This concerned them, but ultimately they are under the impression that the people handling it know more than me and I can't be correct.
I don't think they are particularly out-of-the-ordinary, so I don't think the solution is a simple act of informing people. I think people who do care about this stuff largely need to accept the possibility that this isn't important to the majority of the population, and that it never will be (no matter how informed the public is). Instead, we need to continue build the tools and the infrastructure to secure ourselves regardless of policy and legislation.
But when I say the kinds of changes being proposed would fundamentally undermine the security encryption provides, they think I'm wrong. Like most of the current presidential-hopefuls, they believe in a magic-bullet that will give the government access but no one else. They think someone smarter than me will implement it, and that my concerns are misplaced.
Again, I don't see this as a strange viewpoint. I think, to some degree, it's what most people believe.
That's rather disingenuous, I am all for banning people buying howitzers and other artillery even if there just big guns. Yes, you can make them with a decent machine shop, but just because some nutjobs are highly capable does not mean they all are.
It is easier to carry out a door to door mass shooting with a pistol grip. This is why assault weapons have them in the first place. Sure, it might only save a few lives, but that would be meaningful for those who lived. ;0
</enough derailing>
IMO, none of that stuff was going to get passed, it's all about the political football. I am starting to think encryption may be the same game as it's a great way to drum up donations.
Now, change it to "bayonet mounts", which is another feature that was listed on the "Assault Weapons Ban" law. How does having a bayonet aid someone in a mass shooting? In fact, when has a mass shooter ever had a bayonet mounted on his rifle? I'm not even sure why they bother with them any more; I've never seen any pictures with US military servicemen in combat in the last 20 years with bayonets mounted in their M-16s or M-4s.
Another thing was flash suppressors. How is banning those going to prevent mass shootings? The whole point of a flash suppressor is so the enemy on a battlefield can't tell where gunfire is coming from exactly. Someone walking into a movie theater isn't all that worried about return fire, and in a room that size when he enters through the emergency-exit door, it's not like he's going to be well-hidden.
But seriously, the whole thing is pretty dumb IMO. They tried to ban very, very minor features (pistol grips, flash suppressors, barrel shrouds, etc.), but ignored the things that really made these weapons good at shooting lots of people, namely semiautomatic operation and easily-swapped magazines. If you want to make mass shootings hard, ban magazine-fed ammunition and semiautomatic operation. Of course, that'll bring you right back to Old West 6-shooters (well, modern .357 Magnum revolvers would still be legal too, but you could also ban that style of revolver where the cylinder is easily opened and reloaded with a speedloader; the Old West revolvers didn't have that, you had to reload them one at a time, very slowly). But of course they know that'll never work since people have had semiauto guns for a century or more now and aren't going to turn them all in, so they go for a feel-good measure that'll make ignorant anti-gun voters happy without actually changing anything substantive.
Granted, it's like banning the ergonomic snow shovel. Sure, it's slightly better, but it's generally not a huge difference.
Yep, this is why so many polls are BS: the questions are worded in such a way to coerce people to answer a certain way, or options are left out.
It may not even be intentional; if you use the OKCupid dating site, they have thousands of questions you can answer so that it can match you up with people. I think a lot of these questions (probably most) were actually submitted by users, and many times they have terrible choices. For instance, there's one question about dogs: it asks if you want to own a dog or not. The choices are (I don't have the exact Q in front of me here) "yes, I do or would love to own a dog!", or "No, I dislike dogs". WTF? If you pick the latter, it makes you look like you hate dogs. But what if you like dogs just fine and are generally an animal-loving person, but you just don't want to own and care for a dog? I like horses well enough too, but that doesn't mean I want to buy a horse farm and fill the barn with horses. I think iguanas are cute, but I don't really want one as a pet. I think parrots are beautiful and interesting animals, but I really don't want to live with all that squawking (plus I think they should be left in the wild). But somehow because I don't want to take care of a dog, I'm suddenly a dog-hater according to this poll question.
The way a poll question is designed really reflects a lot on the bias of the person writing the poll; the only way to mitigate it is to have every poll question thoroughly scrutinized by a diverse committee. But they never are, they just run the poll, collect the data, and assume it to be gospel truth.