I would say almost the opposite. If there is anything hurting the Internets potential as a platform for free speech it is the inability to understand that not all cultures, countries or people want unfettered access to drugs, guns, gambling, prostitution, pornography or violence. You could not convince most countries to block politics on the Internet. You can convince them to block politics as part of enforcing their already existing laws or social rules concerning vice.
I don't see it. There is always a case for privacy. But if people consider the presidency corrupt it would probably be a good idea to grant the judicial branch more power. Because secrecy doesn't protect you against a sufficiently corrupt government, it protects the government from you.
Also I rarely have seen any government system installed in such a way that some kind of lawful intercept mechanism would be required to circumvent their internal controls; they almost always are set up in standard boring enterprise way where an admin user can easily access anything, reset any credential, etc. I have seen systems where people forgot the admin credentials or lost access to the admins, but even in those systems there were easy backdoors with physical access.
There are some systems designed to protect keys and admin access from lower tier admins (for crypto fill, etc), but with those they are generally not archival, just transport security, and there are ways to downgrade or replace keys on request. The judiciary also doesn’t in practice have any real ability to do things to the executive without cooperation of parts of the executive; if we had some insane civil war type situation where a federal judge wanted to enforce an order against the executive, it would be basically impossible to do so without some support of the executive (or an external force, like a state national guard). This isn’t how it should be, but probably was like this within a decade of the constitution’s ratification and has gotten more so with time.
I guess it wouldn't necessarily be the judiciary. What I am getting at is that what enables you to run a conspiracy against the government also enables them to run a conspiracy against you. When journalists starts ending up dead, like in Malta or Slovakia, you want to be able to unravel any connection the murderers had to political figures and not end up with a bunch of dead ends consisting of encrypted communication and currency. How to actually solve that in a good way is up for debate though.
Privacy protects you from any entity wanting to use your personal life to discredit you. Secrecy doesn't protect you since a corrupt government will intimidate, discredit or kidnap you regardless of merit. What protects you is being able to uncover their slush funds and secret dealings.
The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution basically says there is no justification for such powers. The entire foundation of the the US Government is a warning against the centralization of power.
China operates like you describe and people that think like that should just move there. Perhaps we could create a program to swap citizens between countries so people can live with their ideological peers.
From what powers? The 4th amendment does not protect you from "reasonable" searches. A corrupt government wouldn't care about the constitution, like during Watergate. I am not a US citizen nor in the US (so the 4th amendment doesn't cover me) and I have already spent a fair amount of time in China. But thanks for offering.
"Tech" is one of the richest industries in history. It has literally enabled people like Elon Musk to create their own private space programs, something most nation states are unable to do. It is also the industry that, again literally, is based on building systems to gather, present and organize people and information.
People in "tech" overall does not want to study other subjects than computer science, they do not want publish publications with other people, change the way the Internet works (in their own direction) nor organize with other people.
There is very little indicating that the support for free speech in "tech" is any more substantial than any industry's support for what serves them at the moment.
You're conflating the tech industry (what's with the constant air quotes) with the kind of people who are concerned about these laws and the effects of the dangerous precendent they set.
>People in "tech" overall does not want to study other subjects than computer science
People in a field are fans of that field and want to study it deeply? Surprises me for sure.
Because I am using the word vaguely to largely mean tech culture.
> People in a field are fans of that field and want to study it deeply? Surprises me for sure.
It is not a surprise to me. I am the one arguing that people don't actually think it is that important. Because usually when you think something is important you show an interest in it.
There are people interested in technology that also study ethics, law, psychology or even just things like information systems which are subjects that raises these questions. But those people are few and far between and tends to have a more complex view of the issue.
