This situation exemplifies a type of conundrum: conditions or goals X and Y are incompatible; they cannot coexist. Persons A and B observe this fact, and A conc

This situation exemplifies a type of conundrum: conditions or goals X and Y are incompatible; they cannot coexist. Persons A and B observe this fact, and A concludes "Therefore X must be sacrificed to protect Y" and B concludes "Therefore Y must be sacrificed to protect X". Your argument starts with the premise that the government is always entitled to data on particular individuals being investigated, and all other values must always be sacrificed to that end. Your review of the costs imposed, however, recognizes only the wiretapping of "every other user". There is also an additional price paid, which is even more significant and unfortunately not recognized in your argument nor even in Leveson's arguments in the case. The SSL private key is not only for encryption, it also is designed to authenticate the server to the user. Thus, revealing it enables the additional party to impersonate the server owner online. (In this case, the impersonation would have taken the form of a compromised server, no longer under the owner's control, purporting to be the uncompromised server still under the owner's control.) The evil comes in with the combination of this demand and the gag order. If the server owner could either keep the key secret or warn the users, this evil could not happen - but when both are prohibited, he is forced to enable the third party to lie to the users and make his server a fraud. Accordingly, my view is that one of these things must yield - either the secret key demands or the gag orders. This is a higher social value than the wiretapping of persons alleged to be suspected of crimes ("alleged" because the secrecy of the process prevents the citizens verifying that the government has any legitimate grounds at all).