The German BND snoops traffic at DECIX. UK snoops on transatlantic cables. Everyone snoops.
Either we move to full e2e encryption or we organize democratically to tear down the modern Stasi.
Either we move to full e2e encryption or we organize democratically to tear down the modern Stasi.
To forward a lot of it to the NSA [0], the same NSA that also messed with Germanys G10 laws to "legalize" these kinds of practices in the very first place [1] for exactly that reason.
edit: UK is pretty much also NSA, because unlike the German BND they are at least part of FiveEyes [2] because real global surveillance is a rather exclusive club.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eikonal
[1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/20140...
The possibility of wiretapping will always exist, even if not carried out wholesale by the government itself. And so will commercial services touting convenience in exchange for being MITMed.
The benefit is that it does not require any argumentation with other people, noone needs to be convinced or won over, and that it makes sense. It costs nearly nothing to deploy cryptographic solutions.