> It's telling that law enforcement priorities work out this way. They're not terribly concerned about what hijinks highly-educated hackers get up to or the occ

> It's telling that law enforcement priorities work out this way. They're not terribly concerned about what hijinks highly-educated hackers get up to or the occasional tech-savvy stalker, they would much rather be able to nab the untrained- the working-class dropouts who own a cellphone but don't know how it works- as quickly and efficiently as possible. Nevermind that the average citizen is much more concerned about identity theft than someone smoking weed on a street corner. Yeah, law enforcement is graded on quantity rather than quality baring a truly unusual situation. This leads to them having a preference to permitting broken systems abused by criminals to remain in place so they can catch the uneducated and the uninformed. It is sadly the same trick they use with child porn. They'd rather distribute it and catch low hanging fruit than shut it down to do more legwork. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/01/27/the-ethics-of-a-child-pornography-sting/the-government-shouldnt-distribute-child-pornography-period http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/01/27/the-ethics-o... > Participating in the distribution of child pornography is a federal crime. But that’s exactly what the F.B.I. did in this case. In order to identify more than 1,000 people suspected of trading in child pornography, the F.B.I. operated a child pornography website for nearly two weeks. During that period, more than 23,000 images of child pornography were available for viewing, downloading and endless reproduction in ways completely beyond the F.B.I.’s control. In short: The government has criminalized an activity and acted to further the commission of just that crime. > If the government is going to break the law in order to enforce it, it must justify how any resulting benefits outweigh any harms. When the government participates in the distribution of contraband, it has little control over who will use those illegal guns, drugs or child pornography, and little ability to protect victims from these harms. They aren't interested in the ethics of it. They just want to increase their numbers.