> but they're only doing what private industry has for years. Thoughts similar to this one are often deployed here - like this: commenter A: This makes <probl

> but they're only doing what private industry has for years. Thoughts similar to this one are often deployed here - like this: commenter A: This makes <problem related to surveillance> worse commenter B: It's only incrementally worse, so it's OK. Besides <other parts of problem> mean there's no practical difference currently (at least if you've already basically admitted defeat about <problem> as I have), so what possible rational basis could there possibly be for not going ahead? But many steps that make a problem incrementally worse can lead you to a bad place. Many steps that make things incrementally better would lead us to a better place. And with a tangled problem like this is by now, I think you do sometimes have to accept that not every step may always make a practical difference for many people, if you want to move towards a solution rather than forever away from it. In this case I'm surprised to see you use the word "only" - government starting to mandate something is a significant step over even a duopoly doing so, because the cost of trying to ignore a government mandate can be much higher even than ignoring the smartphone duopoly - right? I can and do avoid the smartphone duopoly currently, but good luck to me if the government mandates it, eh? Also given government power, in some ways it's a lot easier to make progress on knotty problems like this one than it is for a company, because government has a lot of power - so in that sense they have less excuse than private industry for moving us backwards here. Of course the public, though I think they see the problem to some extent, don't really believe in solutions yet. It's up to us to give them confidence that better solutions exist.