pleasently surprised to hear something like this on HN. I am not super convinced that public servants are "out to get us", but probably woefully uninformed and

pleasently surprised to hear something like this on HN. I am not super convinced that public servants are "out to get us", but probably woefully uninformed and living in a certain bubble. Just like how we're in a bubble filled with images of totalitarianism that makes us react so violently to comments like this. I'm always reminded of Adam Curtis' blog post on the history of MI5(http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER). An absolute must-read. Basically MI5 was lead by people in an alternate reality to what was already happening. Their objectives were not malicious in itself, but their worldview was so insane that what they ended up doing was pretty head-scratching. Here, the FBI spends their time running after kidnappers or something, and suddenly they can't get text messages from the kid's phone (which is probably the best lead in these sorts of situations), it could be extremely frustrating. Just by the way, kidnappings are a very real thing that happen extremely often in the US (250000 a year in the USA). Only 115 are of the "stranger kidnapping a kid" variety, most are people they know, so of course the police would like to see the text messages. "Think of the children" is a tired trope, and I don't think that it's a real argument, but the FBI works on a lot of these cases, and this will hinder their job. It's normal for them to speak up about it. Doesn't mean they should get access though.