Laws are not going to protect people from the NSA. Especially laws that only apply to a miniscule fraction of the population (ie the fraction of the population that lives in the USA). Spy agencies are a global menace.
Of course laws will protect us. They are actually our only real hope. With the right laws, Snowden is a whistleblower with due protection. There is no debate as to whether he is a "traitor" or who broke the law, and the entire dynamic is changed here.
Either we are a nation of laws or we are not. Laws are what constrain our government and what confer and protect all of our rights. Why should this be any different? Why should we suddenly abandon law here in favor of some (inevitably inadequate) technical scheme? It is naive to believe otherwise and it is more naive (catastrophic) to advocate a model wherein we do not rely on laws, but instead our personal capabilities to protect our rights from our own government. Advocating encryption over laws is just one example of that.
Protecting ourselves from the government with tech is a tempting, freedom-figthting technologist's fantasy. We cannot even duly protect ourselves from zero-day exploits. Why on earth would we abandon the law and position ourselves to play cat-and-mouse with the U.S. government?
Better laws, and official respect for them, would be the better solution if we had that option. But how do we get there? Has such a scenario ever effectively protected citizens from government in the real world? And what are we supposed to do in the meantime?
"We cannot even duly protect ourselves from zero-day exploits" - well that's definitional, isn't it? It's hardly a reason to give up on trying to protect communications from "big brother".
>Has such a scenario ever effectively protected citizens from government in the real world?
Of course it has, unless you believe that all of our rights in the U.S. are a sham, and are routinely violated in private by our government. No, it's not perfect and it never will be as long as humans are involved. But, there have to be definitions of right and wrong with associated penalties--in other words, laws.
>well that's definitional, isn't it?
That's my point. These things still exist. The fact that we continue to battle one-off hackers, groups, etc. and frequently lose should give us pause to consider whether this is really the cat-and-mouse posture we want to assume with the U.S. government.
>It's hardly a reason to give up on trying to protect communications from "big brother".
I don't have anything against taking prudent measures to protect our privacy in general. But, this idea that technical solutions will ultimately protect us from "big brother" is pure folly. Without the law on our side, we will lose.
