Thank god someone else noticed. I was starting to doubt my sanity. More than usual, I mean.

You’re right, and there’s two things going on here, one group of people is debating the morality of what these people did in the first place, but the other take is platform compliance with law enforcement and more generally the government’s ability to access your data.

You’re contrasting that a warrant should not really be a concern compared with the government’s ability to perform truly invasive surveillance potentially without any warrant.

I don’t know that you really disagree with person you’re replying to, though. Yeah, if people are doing something their government classifies as illegal, talking about it on unencrypted spaces where it’s subject to a warrant is dumb.

Very few people would be alarmed when Facebook turns over data related to human traffickers. Some would. But for those who are focused on morality, would it matter if the method was, say, the NSA cracking encryption without a warrant? Or tapping communications through an encryption back door?They’d probably be more worried about admitting the evidence than whether the method should be allowed.

It’s certainly worth considering that if governments are criminalizing behavior people believe ought not to be a crime, they need to be more aware that communication security is a thing and there are methods and tools to help with that, and powers the government have to thwart it. But who the government is going after will make people care about the issue differently.

Thinking about hypotheticals where this plays out in other scenarios doesn’t seem like an oversimplification, it’s a valid consideration, at least for public awareness.