Your assumption that "criminals" are doing something morally wrong is fundamentally flawed. Civil rights activists were criminals, as were suffragettes, and the people who protected Jews in Nazi Germany, and gay or trans people just existing in countries where that isn't allowed. All criminals. Law enforcement isn't even always carrying out the law, as we've seen with ICE arresting, assaulting, searching, deporting people on no other basis than their skin color.

Democracy dies when people can't protest. When they are under constant surveillance, afraid of being singled out by the government intelligence gathering mechanisms. Unable to speak out about injustice, organise and engage in healthy counter culture.

Look at Russia, look at China. Don't imagine that giving your own government and law enforcement the same tools of surveillance and oppression will have a different outcome.

How does it protect trafficers especially? Does it have some extra trafficking features? Does it unlock additional capabilities if you're a criminal? Or maybe it just protects everyone?

In the era before the advent of mass digital surveillance, it was well understood that there are many different ways to fight crime. Now every time I see this conversation being had, it's treated as if keeping any amount of privacy beyond what you personally find acceptable is tantamount to endorsing the existence of human traffickers. Warrantless spread-shot digital surveillance is now often treated as essential.

I have a question for you. Why don't you advocate for more surveillance? The more active and widespread the surveillance, the more criminals can be caught. If you think it's not entirely practical, just embark on a thought experiment with me -- assume it would be practical. Would you do it? Would you have everyone be under perfect surveillance 24/7 in order to catch every criminal? Let's call this stance surveillance maximalism.

If you agree with surveillance maximalism, then we're just very different people and I don't think we can find common ground. I hope we can live peacefully in different countries with different laws that suit our preferences.

If you disagree with surveillance maximalism, then why is your arbitrary tradeoff so good? It's not obvious why it's better. You are assuming the moral high ground, but you're also doing the same thing you're accusing me of -- you're accepting some amount of traffickers existing by not being a surveillance maximalist.

By adopting this moral high ground, the discourse is kept at a shallow level. We talk less about which surveillance measures are actually effective or not, what has happened to crime rates over time, what is the context in which crime occurs, what are the negative consequences of undermining privacy, what are the negative consequences of mass surveillance etc. Instead we waste our time and energy on cheap moral opprobrium.

You forgot terrorists on your usual list of reasons e2e is bad. Technology will always be used for bad and good, but there are far more people using it for good than bad.