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A comment on UK PM wants to ban crypto: here's what it would cost, and why it won't work anyway. Parent comment

Re:UK PM wants to ban crypto: here's what it would cost, and... by chillwaves on Sunday June 04, 2017 @06:55PM (#14484143)
That's not an honest representation of the argument given there is no parallel you can make between today's world of electronic communication passing over centralized infrastructure to however people communicated before.

There was no ability for the government to read everyone's (or anyone's) mail at once in the past.

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Re:UK PM wants to ban crypto: here's what it would cost, and... by threeseed on Sunday June 04, 2017 @08:27PM (#14484506)
Intelligence services absolutely had the ability to read people's postal mail and intercept their phone calls. For example, the CIA in a declassified report from 1976 opened over 215,000 physical letters:

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/0001420864

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Re:UK PM wants to ban crypto: here's what it would cost, and... by andy_ppp on Sunday June 04, 2017 @10:45PM (#14484972)
I guess that's a very small sample. We are talking about them making copies of every letter ever sent...
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Re:UK PM wants to ban crypto: here's what it would cost, and... by shusson on Sunday June 04, 2017 @08:34PM (#14484527)
What about telephone wire tapping? e.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
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Re:UK PM wants to ban crypto: here's what it would cost, and... by izacus on Monday June 05, 2017 @04:03AM (#14485999)
There is a huge difference in scale. Phone wiretapping required explicit targeting and was not possible at scale modern measures allow.
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