Comment by AnthonyMouse
4 days ago
The trouble with your analogy is that physical reality works the same way. People have been committing mail fraud since the advent of post offices. Spies have been planting bugs on delivered goods since the invention of bugs. The thing that causes this isn't digital devices, it's long-distance delivery of goods and messages.
Meanwhile installing software on your own device is the thing that isn't that. They're preventing it even when you're the owner of the device and have physical access to it. They're not installing a lock so that only you can get in, they're locking you out of your own building so they can install a toll booth on the door.
All of your examples require, to successfully attack one target, a level of effort (hiring human spies and keeping them happy so that they don’t whistleblow or swap sides, planting physical bugs, etc.) vastly incomparable with a level of effort required to attack millions upon millions of targets; and just as incomparably higher stakes of an unsuccessful operation (actual people going to jail, versus being perfectly safe in a jurisdiction that does not extradite).