> Is there a middle ground? Look at how anti-drug-cartel and anti-terrorism laws have been applied in practice in the US. We've basically trained law enforcem

> Is there a middle ground? Look at how anti-drug-cartel and anti-terrorism laws have been applied in practice in the US. We've basically trained law enforcement and prosecutors that their jobs get magically easier by acquiring superpowers as long as they whisper the magic words "terrorism" and/or "drugs" (or "kiddieporn" ) three times. See civil forfeiture, for an instances of law enforcement routinely abusing superpowers it gains by whispering "drugs" three times before grabbing something. This sort of mission creep/misuse is a social problem that's immune to technical solutions. No matter how perfect key escrow is, it's in the career interests of law enforcement and prosecutors to socially engineer their way around the protections. We're not intentionally creating a Super Stasi, but we're accidentally creating lots of mini Super Stasis by law interpretations that allow bulk collection at an unprecedented level and poorly thought out career incentives for law enforcement and prosecutors. When there are no consequences for admittedly leaking the identity of an active undercover CIA asset for political reasons[0], there will be no consequences for leaking anyone's personal information for political reasons. The magic words used to include "communist", which allowed the FBI[1] way too much investigative power into the civil rights and feminist movements simply by whispering "communist, communist, communist.". The FBI's activities included actively interfering with the civil rights movement. There's also evidence that someone with access to the bug recordings from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s hotel room tried blackmailing him into committing suicide[1]. Hopefully that was just one or two rogue agents. The inability of government agencies to secure their own systems, along with commercial pressures on companies, means that once these investigative powers are created, they're also available to any medium sized country. If you're on the political left, this means homosexuals in many countries are at risk. If you're on the political right, it means many Christians and other religious minorities in many countries are at risk. So, the middle ground is not about trusting the current FBI and current US intelligence services. It's about trusting all current and future FBI's and the the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of all medium-sized countries from here forward. As a minimum set of requirements, the middle ground would seem to require: 1. Not allowing a rogue US LEO to blackmail MLK by whispering "communist"/"terrorist" three times 2. Generally Technically solving the LEO/prosecutory social engineering problems of key escrow 3. Not putting sexual, religious, and political minorities in foreign countries at risk [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage_(politician) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage_(politician) [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO EDIT: Forgot to actually include footnote.