Comment by riversflow

I'm not a security professional by any means, but this has been my line of thinking on this whole debate for quite a while. It's pretty silly considering what has been made public about the clandestine operations of alphabet agencies,(if you were paying attention to the right channels[1] their was good reason to believe that the 4th amendment was a joke to the Feds long before Snowden's leaks) especially combined with the existences and complete opaqueness of secret FISA Court. Its kinda crazy to me that all these technologists, and especially those on *hacker*news really believe that you have any sort of privacy from the US government, who has demonstrated it can act with complete impunity in most parts of the world for decades. I say especially people here because they should know how just a handful of rogue actors in any given organization could subvert any sort of veil of privacy. I'm not an expert by any means, but it makes complete sense to me that privacy in any large organization is a very delicate thing to maintain when your adversary is as sophisticated and belligerent as the US security and intelligence apparatus appears to be. Maybe I'm just not privy to something, but it seems like if the US national security apparatus want to do something on our or allies soil, they'll find a way.

[1]https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/homefront/ - aired 15-5-07 and covered the notorious ATT room 641a