Maybe now Diane Feinstein will see the value of end to end encryption?
Doubt it. She'll probably advocate that only for herself and her Senate colleagues.
Doubt it. She'll probably advocate that only for herself and her Senate colleagues.
The problem of encryption is that it changes the relationship between government and individual in a way that has never been seen before. If a person is suspected of committing a crime the police have always had the ability to intercept mail, record calls, search property etc and obtain evidence. They can't do that now.
You can argue the pros/cons of this new world order. What you can't argue against is the natural inclination of many people to simply maintain the status quo.
The first is, as you say, previously you could intercept a suspect's mail and search their papers; with proper encryption that isn't possible.
The second is in the past the search process wouldn't scale to searching every citizen all the time. With e-mail, web traffic and smartphones, it becomes possible.
We can restore the status quo from 30 years ago for either one of those changes, but not for both.
The one big difference between bugging someone's home vs. encryption backdoor is one of scale, and I don't think citizens should so substantially yield their security so that the state can save money.
I think the natural inclination of voters isn't relevant just yet because privacy and encryption are so far down the list of topics of national salience, or topics to organize voters, that it doesn't register on anyone's political radar. If encryption or security backdoors are mentioned on the national stage, it will be entirely as a subtopic of only terrorism.