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Re:Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror At... by nindalf on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @12:29PM (#10582618)
You are right, there would be many petty criminals who would be caught because they'd talk about their crimes in plaintext. There would be a reduction in petty crime, while leaving major crime pretty much untouched. That sounds like a good thing... except it might not be in society's interest to eliminate petty crime, as Snowden explains here [1].

[1] - http://nindalf.com/OverconfidentArowana

Re:Times Pulls Article Blaming Encryption in Paris Terror At... by ikeboy on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @01:38PM (#10583061)
Would you consider any crime which the settlement is in the hundreds of millions "petty"? If not, then http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-05/sanctions-s... is a counter-example.

See also http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-20/shh-credit-..., http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-18/bny-mellon-... and http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-20/accidental-...

Clearly neither being really smart nor having a lot at stake will prevent someone from sending sensitive things over email.

As for terrorists, a short search turns up https://books.google.com/books?id=VqY4Wr3T5K4C&pg=PA410&lpg=....

I think if you claim that major criminals' encryption usage would be unaffected by making it difficult to use, you need to support that at least as well as I've just argued for the opposite.