That's a false equivalence though and not what the alternative option is here. The government was killing its enemies 100 years before the word digital was invented and will continue to do so as long as government exist. They will use every technology invented in the pursuit of doing so. Blaming metadata signature based approaches is no different than blaming their use of satellites, metallurgy, hell the wheel is a big part of their war machine. It has always been this way and it will continue to always be this way.