Bruce Schneier famously said: "Every time you use encryption, you're protecting someone who needs to use it to stay alive."
If we assume that the government can monitor all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time, then the whole e2e debate appears in a new light.
> Bad guys are often enough astonishingly stupid
I am told that Al-Qaeda once (post 9/11) considered using some AES-encrypted messaging system, but rejected it on the grounds that if the infidels had designed it, they could presumably read it. Instead, their own "secure messenger" launched with basically a monoalphabetic cipher based on the Arabic language. The NSA just needed to track down everyone using that particular app (probably one of their easier operations!) and then they could read everything said over that channel as an added bonus.
If we assume that the government can monitor all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time, then the whole e2e debate appears in a new light.
> Bad guys are often enough astonishingly stupid
I am told that Al-Qaeda once (post 9/11) considered using some AES-encrypted messaging system, but rejected it on the grounds that if the infidels had designed it, they could presumably read it. Instead, their own "secure messenger" launched with basically a monoalphabetic cipher based on the Arabic language. The NSA just needed to track down everyone using that particular app (probably one of their easier operations!) and then they could read everything said over that channel as an added bonus.