Sorry, I was too brief. I explained it further it in another comment. But my point was that you should presume all communications channels are transparent to nation states. I was not referring that it's okay to have a surveillance civilization. My point was that we have a surveillance civilization, and you either use the communication fabric supported or you don't.

Better ask for browsing and messaging history.

That should be a much better analogy. Especially in the postmodern hypersensitive world.

What exactly leads you to believe that posting your credit card number on hacker news is somehow equivalent to not being outraged by the U.S. sharing _encrypted_ messages of suspected terrorists with the UK? Let’s not pretend the world is so black and white.

I was arguing against the idea of "if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide".

It's a bad attitude to have because allowing the government to have that power at all is a problem, even for terrorists and murderers and pedophiles. Because we don't know if people are those things until we investigate them, which means the government gets broad powers to investigate people to look for those kinds of crimes, and maybe find other people they want to get for other reasons.

I used to investigate computer crime. Yeah, my job would have been a lot easier if I had unlimited access to anyone's email. But instead I had to investigate and build a case without privileged access. It was harder, but I was glad that the system couldn't be abused.

Why should governments or law enforcement have privileged access?

Also because "good" democratic governments that respect human rights and personal freedoms deteriorate to oppressive tyrannies all the time. What's to say that your country won't?

Who'll protect you when they come knocking on your door to talk about that thing you posted about somewhere online, which used to be quite legal and no problem, but now is super illegal for some oppressive reason or another?

    First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

         Because I was not a socialist.

    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
         Because I was not a trade unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
         Because I was not a Jew.

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Obviously not here, but I don't care much if LE sees them.