If a technology enables criminals to coordinate without any hope of detection that seems worthy of some fear to me.
This has always been true. The old fashion way of doing it was called "getting together in person someplace private." Yes Signal makes it a bit easier, but also general technology makes it harder too.
Anyone can host an e2e chat solution, trying to take Signal down doesn't change anything for serious organised crime.
They can do that. The cat is out of the bag. Worst case they can just use GPG/PGP, S/MIME or a bunch of other ways. Backdooring a communication medium just means they won't use it in the first place.
That's the price you have to pay if you want to live in a free country.
The point of the original article is that it's not black and white. There is no, and never can be any, entirely free country. I want to be free enough to have good privacy, but not so free as to allow a crime ring to take over my town.
if you are in a position a crime ring can take over your town, no amount of surveillance will help, it will most likely make the crime ring stronger by giving them access to it, there's a joke here about the government being already the crime ring I guess.
Some people say that already has happened, and the crime ring is called "the government".
>Some people
Other people think those first people are complete nutjobs.