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This is one reason why enacting this kind of legislation is such a terrible idea for the very people advocating it. Right now most of the web is ridiculously open and unencrypted. If authorities get the appropriate warrants it's almost guaranteed they will be able to spy on almost anybody doing almost anything because the default mode is unencrypted and nobody really thinks about it. But that default mode is only the default because people think their communications are reasonably private anyway, precisely because this kind of logging is pretty expensive and impractical. Laws to enforce it will motivate everyone to move to encrypted connections, greatly increase use of VPNs for all non-trivial communications, and ensure that criminals become educated about how to encrypt their activities.

If governments around the world seriously pursue this, far from reaping the windfall they are hoping for they will actually kill the golden goose that could be helping them solve more crimes than ever.




This is, of course, assuming, that the government is creating this law for the reason of solving crime and not for some special interests / lobbies.




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