I think you are mixing two separate things: rule of law vs privacy. Sure, we didn’t have encrypted communication a couple decades ago, but we did have an expec

I think you are mixing two separate things: rule of law vs privacy. Sure, we didn’t have encrypted communication a couple decades ago, but we did have an expectation of privacy: letters, phone calls, even in-person conversations. Encryption is just the modern way of preserving that same right in a digital context.