Do you assume that the techniques used for something most would assume to be reasonable will not ever be used in less desirable ways?
This is the FBI taking down criminals engaging in a clear criminal activity, and it is silly to implicitly compare it to the NSA fishing for terrorists. All the evidence gathered here will be presented in a court of law, all the techniques used will have to be approved by judges as in accordance with laws and the constitution or the gathered evidence will be thrown out. The suspect and any other future suspects will get a trial if they want. It will be out in the open.
If you are upset that the software you thought was secure and anonymous isn't as secure and anonymous as you thought, that isn't the FBI's fault.
I am worried about government agencies intercepting my traffic / communications because it does happen, it's really hard to find out unless you know what you're looking for, and they don't have a warrant on every American citizen that happens to get caught.
Spend a little time in here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=warrant+no+knock+raid+mistake&t=ca...
Or here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=warrant++raid+mistake+death&t=cano...
Or here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/swat-t...
I'm still waiting for the scandal.
ddg, I think, does their own spidering and also serves bing and other results (but not google), but that's from dusty memory and it could be wrong or changed. ddg will however forward your request to google if you want, and you'll get a results page from google itself. In fact I use ddg as a front end for google when I want to use google.
startpage is Dutch/American, ddg is American.
https://startpage.com/eng/company-background.html
https://duckduckgo.com/about http://dontbubble.us/
ddg's Gabriel Weinberg posts here on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=epi0Bauqu
how are you sure of that? Do you honestly think the public is privy to the movements of the people in charge?
You might want to rethink your position: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/13/25_years_ago_philadelp...
When the FBI engages in unethical and illicit practice, it's like stating that rules do not apply for them. Given for granted that they are in a position of power a priori, it's hard for me to see how this is good thing and how accountability can be held.
Also you seem to be convinced that the judge and court will apply the rule of law to the FBI as they would have done with you and me.
Also to address collective-action problems (like defense).
If we were to learn that they found it to be acceptable practice to use these weapons indiscriminately on innocent people in their efforts to catch the bad guys, I might want to take away their guns, tear gas, and helicopters.