Wired's Attack on Privacy

It's silly how privacy detractors try to associate so-and-so terrible group with any software that simply lets people talk without corporate or government surveillance, as if the concept of a private conversation is a strange and suspicious thing now.

To play devil's advocate: private face-to-face conversations do not allow for effective coordination of actions across large distances. There are plenty of good arguments for keeping the government out of everyone's private messages, but this kind of messaging and a conversation are not the same thing.

Yes, they do, it just takes longer to enact what was coordinated.

There's no fundamental difference between a conversation in a meadow and one online.

Sometimes quantity has a quality all of its own. The difference is in the number of people who can be involved and the distances that can be conquered, but those differences completely change the possibilities of online speech.

Aware that I'm reacting to someone playing devil's advocate...

> private face-to-face conversations do not allow for effective coordination of actions across large distances. <snip> this kind of messaging and a conversation are not the same thing.

Technology allows it. The same way it allows for myriad other applications that technology has made possible via extension of a base capability. I would argue that the technological ability extend 'topic X' makes it close enough to "the same thing".

If a Government has a problem with an app because it allows private conversation between physically distant individuals, then that Government likely also has a problem with private conversations between non-physically distant individuals. They just won't mention that because it's transparently obviously authoritarian.

The 'technology' angle only has political play because there will always be a core contingent of society that is scared enough of technology to have a much louder voice than their numbers would indicate.

Just as the governments power to violate anyones privacy when needed was previously tolerable only because it was physically limited.

ie warrants and wire taps and physically breaking in to buildings and safes could be done to anyone at any time, but not everyone, at the same time, all the time, from afar, without even being seen.

It's disingenuous to rationalize or excuse one without acknowledging the other.

And even the old form of the right and ability to break in to any safe still didn't magically un-burn a paper, so that argument against encryption was never valid.

Devils advocate is a critical role, but in this case it only serves the valuable role of showing that no matter how hard one tries, there is no validity to authoritarian/statist attacks on encryption, or indeed any self-actualized tech.

This is not true. We’ve all observed how differently people behave online. The anonymity aspect creates different social outcomes.

While there are arguments for preserving encryption, acting like online communication is the same as face to face is disingenuous.

I think in principle most people agree that it's appropriate under some limited circumstances for authorities to listen in to private conversations, given well-founded suspicion of illegal activities taking place, so digital tools making that outright impossible do pose a problem most people find a bit uncomfortable, whether or not they feel the benefits outweigh the downsides.