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Comment by zzzcpan | Hacker News Reader

> "... nor shall the secrecy of any means of communication be violated."

> All wiretapping was illegal in Japan until 1999.

So, at the end of the day constitution is just some document that holds no real power and can be violated once those in power are no longer interested honoring it.

And this is the primary reason for people to have encryption. It's not to protect from some random wannabe hackers, criminals or corporations (which the government can enforce laws against), it's to protect from the government itself. This is why media conversations sound weak and incoherent about encryption and privacy, they are afraid to talk about the biggest reason, don't want to openly and directly oppose the government and instead choose to entertain and dance around all those manufactured ideas.

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Is this argument different if you replace encryption with the right to bear arms?

I don't think it can be an argument for offensive weapons. It's the opposite for offensive weapons. As the government can always have better and more of offensive weapons and letting people have them would just be an excuse to use them against people, make people fear the government, etc.

This particular argument? Not as phrased, no.

The main point often raised around the right to bear arms is that, as currently interpreted in the US, it comes at a steep cost in homicides and suicides.

Encryption doesn't really have comparable collateral damage in society. There's the whole "but terrorists and pedophiles will hide behind encryption" argument, but even if you granted that and could measure the impact, there's little chance it would be anywhere near equivalent to 30 000 deaths annually.

So: a more nuanced version of this argument would point out that there's little to no harm from allowing widespread strong encryption, whereas there's widespread demonstrable harm from allowing widespread firearms.

To compound this, the reverse harms - lack of privacy / security on one hand, strict monopoly of force on the other - are hard to compare. Both have the potential harm of leading to unchecked tyranny, along with the potential benefit of maintaining national security and civil order; depending on which side of the debate you're on, the tendency is to downplay either the harm or the benefit and exaggerate the other.

Any reasoned comparison here ought to take into account that the tradeoffs are clearly different.

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