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Comment by DickingAround | Hacker News Reader

Governments have a long history of doing bad things (e.g. hundreds of millions killed in the last 100 years by USSR/China/Germany but many lesser offenses such as the war on drugs in the US). You often don't get to roll back government powers as a government becomes more corrupt or authoritarian; so once you're in, you're in. Thus; even if giving people privacy allows some crime, it is probably not as bad as all the good that comes from not enabling an authoritarian regime by giving up all your privacy.

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Cars have a long history of killing people, so do planes, so does AIDS, so does... everything, really. So we make changes, we improve, and now AIDs related deaths have dropped off significantly, we haven't had a fatal plane crash in the US in 10 years, and car related deaths in the US have decreased steadily since the 1960s.

Yes, governments have a history of being unsafe to their citizens, but it's not anything like what it once was, and it's getting steadily better, despite what the MSM wants you to think.

Now I'm not saying it's okay they backdoor all encryption, I just don't think the argument "Government evil" is going to hold water for the average person, nor should it.

A much better argument should come from the, "we prefer guilty people go free than innocent people get convicted, let's apply that policy to privacy" school of thought.

Comparing governments as bad actors (malevolent groups of people trying to retain and increase their power yielding already disproportionate amounts of power) to cars and diseases (inanimate objects or, well, diseases) is not a fair argument.

On one hand, organized crime, observable in most countries where governments are present, on the other hand everyday objects and a disease.

Doesn’t look like an argument made in good faith.

You say it's not a good argument but you don't say why. I think it's appropriate, insofar as it's the very government that's made these things safer, improved the lives of their citizens by getting involved.

The exact same mechanisms are available to fight both car deaths and malicious actors. Why do we trust the government to do one but not the other?

(Keep in mind I'm NOT in favor of backdooring crypto, I just don't think "but the government is corrupt" is a good argument against it)

Government today might not be too bad but that has no bearing on government tomorrow.

Anne Frank's father had nothing to hide when he filled in the official forms asking his family religion and we all know how that turned out...

Governments, including current one(s) do have a history of targeting activists and whistleblowers using legal and surveillance tools intended for targeting terrorism.

This does not benefit the population, it only benefits organized crime organizations entrenched in government.

How do cars benefit organized crime as disproportionally as abovementioned tools?

At this point I would actually prefer a criminal street gang to physically protect me. Because they don't care about my private life as long as I pay up. Government does care about my private life, even if I pay up.

Cars don't kill people and spoons don't make them fat; car drivers kill people.

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