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I didn't downvote you either, but I call this response the narcissistic defect of security / privacy analysis. The "I'm not interesting / I've got nothing to hide / X is not interested in me" level of analysis which is about as shallow as you can go in considering privacy / security.

Because looked at from a societal level, more secure citizen communications means a society less able to be manipulated / blackmailed / spied on by bad actors, both domestic and foreign. It doesn't matter if this particular mother never says anything interesting / compromising in communications with her child, because there are many other situations where they will. Their child might be a politican, councillor, businessman doing signficant overseas deals, political activist, dissident.

Your logic is faulty on a number of levels:

* assumes only the US government is a potentially bad actor. This is simply not the case.

* assumes the political / technical climate will never become more hostile to milder expressions of dissent between citizens.

* assumes the parent poster's communications with his mother does not contain any interesting information to any potentially bad actors

Ultimately though, with all the theorizing aside, the parent is simply wanting a solution that provides secure communication with family members which is a very uncontroversial, reasonable goal to have.




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