Perhaps part of the difference is that the public acknowledge this as a necessary _evil_ and get rightly outraged when they hear of people being detained without good cause. But with privacy, especially electronic privacy, almost nobody cares when "we will only allow a small number of agents to use this for imminent terrorist danger" inevitably turns to "we will let any random council worker casually pull up every website you've been to with no warrant"
Someone's encrypted files should be regarded to be in the same category as material they memorized in their brain. Off limits.
Find some other way to get evidence about their wrongdoing to convict them.
I hold neither of the extreme views, and frankly I am baffled by anyone in either of them.
Even in situations where citizen rights do “get in the way” of convicting the guilt, that is the price we pay to not be thrown in jail for crimes we didn’t commit. Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas said “It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” He also said “Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order... and the like.”
I'm not saying, based on that, you throw away privacy rules. But to not even acknowledge that there is a conflict is IMO insane.
Reading through this thread, I get the sense that the desire for absolute privacy stems from a perception of the government as basically another mafia - a ruthless, unprincipled organisation that will exploit any weakness in you, just because. Maybe that's the root of the difference. I'm lucky enough to have never lived in such a country. Sure, I care about government accountability, there will always be bad actors, and governments in general aren't always super-competent, but I believe fundamentally, governments in places I have lived are not evil. They aren't another mafia I need a firewall against.
