PHK’s piece assumes that there’s a clear and effective distinctions between the government and the juducial system: The police can’t wiretap unless authorized by a judge (this could be backed by certificates/whatnot, and not just “ok, go ahead” as it is now.)

However: Not all countries have this effective separation/independence between branches, and some countries which have so far enjoyed such separation are perhaps not so certain anymore.

Even so: I think the point still stands - there is a choice to make, and the current trajectory (EU’s ChatControl, and UK’s encryption ban), is what we’ll risk getting instead.

Even in the US which has those systems, they are not robust enough for me to trust handing over the state this kind of power over all modern communication. Never have the police had this power before, even with warrants.

Backdoored encryption makes everyone unsafe while not stopping bad guys from using actual encryption. And when the bad guys use real encryption, the police can still catch them- see the case of Ross Ulbricht.

The point doesn’t stand because the magic system that only lets the good guys decrypt if only the engineers would think harder simply does not exist, and framing it this way obscures that fact and paves the way for ChatControl or encryption bans, not user freedom. We had this debate before with the Clipper chip, and reason mostly prevailed. Now we’re having it again with even higher stakes and people are arguing to give in to a framing that assumes defeat.