> If they want to investigate stuff, they should have to get warrants and literally send out operatives to physically compromise the targeted equipment. This puts a limit on the scale of government operations. This is how it's supposed to be.
i think that's mostly right. i also take the controversial view that consumer encryption should have a front door for law enforcement. there should be a mechanism where if they are in possession of a valid warrant, and said warrant is validated by third party watchdogs, then they can enter into decryption protocol that will immutably log that the protocol took place in a public, yet cryptographically time embargoed location.
i don't agree with the idea of mass-surveillance data mining dragnets, i think they're constitutionally problematic, but on the same token, if a valid warrant has been issued, investigators need to be able to do their jobs and we as citizens need to be able to audit that said powers are not being abused.
but i will admit, this thinking is immature. the prevalence of information systems in our lives has resulted in the most detailed and rich records of human activity that have ever existed. this is new. on the flip side, advancements in communication have enabled all sort of new paradigms in crime that weren't really possible before. i suspect that getting all of this right will be quite difficult as we don't even fully understand how much the game has changed with these new technologies pervading our lives.