And why not? Law enforcement does not represent supreme justice and good. There are higher moral principles out there. Respect for law enforcement in the absence of justice is a disaster for society. All it does is give cover for bad actors.
I have a question for you. Why don't you advocate for more surveillance? The more active and widespread the surveillance, the more criminals can be caught. If you think it's not entirely practical, just embark on a thought experiment with me -- assume it would be practical. Would you do it? Would you have everyone be under perfect surveillance 24/7 in order to catch every criminal? Let's call this stance surveillance maximalism.
If you agree with surveillance maximalism, then we're just very different people and I don't think we can find common ground. I hope we can live peacefully in different countries with different laws that suit our preferences.
If you disagree with surveillance maximalism, then why is your arbitrary tradeoff so good? It's not obvious why it's better. You are assuming the moral high ground, but you're also doing the same thing you're accusing me of -- you're accepting some amount of traffickers existing by not being a surveillance maximalist.
By adopting this moral high ground, the discourse is kept at a shallow level. We talk less about which surveillance measures are actually effective or not, what has happened to crime rates over time, what is the context in which crime occurs, what are the negative consequences of undermining privacy, what are the negative consequences of mass surveillance etc. Instead we waste our time and energy on cheap moral opprobrium.
That's not what anyone writes, especially not me.
> I have a question for you. Why don't you advocate for more surveillance? The more active and widespread the surveillance, the more criminals can be caught. If you think it's not entirely practical, just embark on a thought experiment with me -- assume it would be practical. Would you do it? Would you have everyone be under perfect surveillance 24/7 in order to catch every criminal? Let's call this stance surveillance maximalism.
Because it's a bad tradeoff between free society and safe society. There's a reason why we put checks and balances on enforcement agencies and why it's so important to keep them up to date.
> If you agree with surveillance maximalism, then we're just very different people and I don't think we can find common ground. I hope we can live peacefully in different countries with different laws that suit our preferences.
I do not agree with surveillance maximalism.
> By adopting this moral high ground, the discourse is kept at a shallow level. We talk less about which surveillance measures are actually effective or not, what has happened to crime rates over time, what is the context in which crime occurs, what are the negative consequences of undermining privacy, what are the negative consequences of mass surveillance etc. Instead we waste our time and energy on cheap moral opprobrium.
I agree, so perhaps losing your mind and going into mindless screaming every time anyone opens a debate about tradeoff between access, surveillance and privacy isn't the best way forward. Which is what's happening here way too many times.
Just because I acknowledge an issue which gave us things like surveillance warrants and existence of police forces doesn't mean you can just strawman me into whatever position you hate. Perhaps think on the reason why every single stable prosperous society has concepts of police and police warrants which grant access to private spheres when deemed necessary.
Democracy dies when people can't protest. When they are under constant surveillance, afraid of being singled out by the government intelligence gathering mechanisms. Unable to speak out about injustice, organise and engage in healthy counter culture.
Look at Russia, look at China. Don't imagine that giving your own government and law enforcement the same tools of surveillance and oppression will have a different outcome.
I personally agree with you, but for most people it's not black or white. They want privacy when it suits them, but would take yours away in a heartbeat.
People easily focus on negative consequences of privacy (dangerous people being able to communicate secretly) and don't notice the benefits they enjoy because of privacy.
As someone who grew up on the other side of the iron curtain, I find this idea that you'll make your own government an enemy and shield criminals against it utterly naive, since that's not what actually changes society. It's a form of techno-cowardice, where people hide behind technology to avoid doing the hard stuff.
Like... this is how the entire underground railroad and many other examples worked out.
There were also other groups hiding away and doing interesting things - killing, maiming murdering. It took access to private communication and files to take those down - you may have have heard of some [0].
If your government is seeking to remove those tools from you then that is a warning sign.
GrapheneOS is not for criminals, its not aimed at criminals, its not designed for criminals. Not implicitly or explicitly.