People use any device or service they want. It’s a mix of crooks, tinkerers, journalists, etc.
A company or government makes some moral panic and pushes some privacy or civil rights erosion in the name of “security”. The actual security benefit may or may not exist.
Then other companies do the same to keep up.
Then there’s only a handful of companies not doing the thing, so anyone who doesn’t want their privacy or civil rights eroded uses that, including crooks.
Then politicians and the other companies point to the holdouts as “PROOF!” their changes were good, because look how many crooks use that stuff! (The number of crooks hasn’t changed, they’ve just been concentrated to a single location.) The moral panic deepens.
The non-criminal population that cares about their privacy or civil rights speak out, but get accused of secretly being criminals, or some other crap that can be used to dismiss their concerns. “If you have nothing to hide, why are you so upset?” and all that.
Now laws get passed to force all companies to do the same thing, to stop the criminals! But let’s not worry about anyone else. The tinkerers, journalists, privacy-advocates, etc. They don’t matter.
The law gets passed, and now all toasters are legally required to record your breakfast conversations, for a silly example.
That’s how it always starts though.
People use any device or service they want. It’s a mix of crooks, tinkerers, journalists, etc.
A company or government makes some moral panic and pushes some privacy or civil rights erosion in the name of “security”. The actual security benefit may or may not exist.
Then other companies do the same to keep up.
Then there’s only a handful of companies not doing the thing, so anyone who doesn’t want their privacy or civil rights eroded uses that, including crooks.
Then politicians and the other companies point to the holdouts as “PROOF!” their changes were good, because look how many crooks use that stuff! (The number of crooks hasn’t changed, they’ve just been concentrated to a single location.) The moral panic deepens.
The non-criminal population that cares about their privacy or civil rights speak out, but get accused of secretly being criminals, or some other crap that can be used to dismiss their concerns. “If you have nothing to hide, why are you so upset?” and all that.
Now laws get passed to force all companies to do the same thing, to stop the criminals! But let’s not worry about anyone else. The tinkerers, journalists, privacy-advocates, etc. They don’t matter.
The law gets passed, and now all toasters are legally required to record your breakfast conversations, for a silly example.