>There are practical reasons for government monitoring of communications. Bad people have existed long enough that it's safe to assume the trend will continue.
Bad governments has existed even longer.
Especially some of them like, you know, the one at constant warfare with other countries, the nuclear-bomb dropping on civilians one, the McCarthyism and J.E Hoover one, the still having the death penalty in 2012 one, the bible yielding one, the BS marijuana prosecutions one, the Rodney King one, the Kent State shootings one, the world leader in incarcerations one, the BS WMD pretext one, the Watergate one, et al.
>Listening to their communications is the best way to stop them, or at least to ensure that they can't act openly.
The second phrase contradicts the first. They quickly assume they cannot talk openly and they don't, so listening to public, unencrypted communications has no use at all. You might catch some naive idiots that way but never the well organised big fish.
Plus, it's all a pretext. It was never about the terrorists, it's about the government having more control, and especially the secret services and such inventing more responsibilities and work for themselves, to ensure bigger budgets and role.
>Very few innocent people will ever know that they're being monitored, and the risks to those people are very small.
Define innocent. In my eyes, John Lennon was bloody innocent. And he has a ten thousand pages FBI file. Same for Martin Luther King. Same for thousands of activists, politicians, and change-makers.
When those people are trapped (and throughout history government has shown the will to trap them and stop them, by any means necessary, from blackmail to imprisonment), all of society is harmed and trapped, because change is resisted.
You might catch some naive idiots that way but never the well organised big fish.
During the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai, Indian government tapped into the mobile conversations of terrorists. These tapped conversations helped in further investigations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks#cite_note-D...
Clearly, these were "well organized big fish" and not "naive idiots".
the still having the death penalty in 2012 one
Whats wrong with death penalty? It is perfectly reasonable response to some kind of crimes. [An example: the terrorist, who was caught live in action, who killed plenty of innocent people. That guy surely deserved a death sentence]
Bad governments has existed even longer.
Especially some of them like, you know, the one at constant warfare with other countries, the nuclear-bomb dropping on civilians one, the McCarthyism and J.E Hoover one, the still having the death penalty in 2012 one, the bible yielding one, the BS marijuana prosecutions one, the Rodney King one, the Kent State shootings one, the world leader in incarcerations one, the BS WMD pretext one, the Watergate one, et al.
>Listening to their communications is the best way to stop them, or at least to ensure that they can't act openly.
The second phrase contradicts the first. They quickly assume they cannot talk openly and they don't, so listening to public, unencrypted communications has no use at all. You might catch some naive idiots that way but never the well organised big fish.
Plus, it's all a pretext. It was never about the terrorists, it's about the government having more control, and especially the secret services and such inventing more responsibilities and work for themselves, to ensure bigger budgets and role.
>Very few innocent people will ever know that they're being monitored, and the risks to those people are very small.
Define innocent. In my eyes, John Lennon was bloody innocent. And he has a ten thousand pages FBI file. Same for Martin Luther King. Same for thousands of activists, politicians, and change-makers.
When those people are trapped (and throughout history government has shown the will to trap them and stop them, by any means necessary, from blackmail to imprisonment), all of society is harmed and trapped, because change is resisted.