This’ll go down well (/s) but if you accept that the State has the right to be able to surveil public communications infrastructure (which it has been doing since paper mail was invented, through: radio, telegraph, telex, telephone, fax, email, and mobile telephony) then it’s not surprising certain commoditised public data handling services might be required to provide government access on demand or be restricted from implementing features that can effectively deny that access.
That angry’s up the blood of libertarians, but ultimately from the point of view of the State it has to be able to do its job of detecting and prosecuting serious crime, and it will redraw privacy lines whenever that is substantially impeded by new technology.
Even many dictatorship states, like many of the "socialist" countries, had in the past articles in their constitutions that guaranteed the secrecy of the mail and of the telephone communications (other telecommunications did not exist at that time). Thus it is false that there is some kind of established tradition that governments may have access to private communications.
In reality the secret police did not care about laws or constitution, so private mail correspondence was intercepted and opened, read, then closed again with care, trying to make this undetectable, and the telephone lines of persons of interest were tapped.
Nonetheless, it was understood that this surveillance is actually illegal, so it was hidden as much as possible.
Nowadays, the government institutions of most "free" states, like USA and UK have granted themselves far more rights to do surveillance of their citizens than the dictators of the past.
Detecting and prosecuting serious crime does not need any such general surveillance. The general surveillance just makes much cheaper the detecting of serious crimes, but in exchange it gives the means to the government employees to commit more serious crimes themselves.
implements · · focus · HN ↗
That angry’s up the blood of libertarians, but ultimately from the point of view of the State it has to be able to do its job of detecting and prosecuting serious crime, and it will redraw privacy lines whenever that is substantially impeded by new technology.
adrian_b · · focus · HN ↗
In reality the secret police did not care about laws or constitution, so private mail correspondence was intercepted and opened, read, then closed again with care, trying to make this undetectable, and the telephone lines of persons of interest were tapped.
Nonetheless, it was understood that this surveillance is actually illegal, so it was hidden as much as possible.
Nowadays, the government institutions of most "free" states, like USA and UK have granted themselves far more rights to do surveillance of their citizens than the dictators of the past.
Detecting and prosecuting serious crime does not need any such general surveillance. The general surveillance just makes much cheaper the detecting of serious crimes, but in exchange it gives the means to the government employees to commit more serious crimes themselves.