Another post on the same site as the root post discusses the surveillance state, he roughly justifies what is happening currently:
https://opaque.link/post/fog_of_cryptowar/
But I disagree on a couple of points, truth is more important than pseudo "pragmatism". A problem with incorrect pragmatism is that we collectively talk each other away from the seemingly impossible... which may in fact turn out to be possible. The study of cryptography (both primitives and protocols and systems) can be viewed as the study of paradoxical possibility. Things that seem to be impossible until they turn out to be possible.
It is in this sense that I wrote:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16947652
Perhaps I should be writing science fiction stories instead...
History suggests that is not long.
Still a fine line to walk.
People from Europe have this sort of... experience. Most of us know that trusting the government with our lives is not a good idea.
The US isn’t naive. In fact, it’s the opposite. It is a country that was so aware of the folly of government that it deliberately inhibited its own government by design. Because it knows damn well what happens when you relinquish control of yourself to another. That’s why the 2nd amendment is so fundamental.
The US doesn’t have to worry about things happening to the govt overnight, because the worry is built in. A successful model exits, it just needs to be followed...
I would have agreed with that assessment in the past but in the present I really can't.
As a bit of a "spoiler" his solution is a covenant with the citizens. The government will hack all of our computers, will own the IME equivalents of every machine, and in return they will only use this power to hunt down terrorists and mass murderers, people who are looking to leverage technology to build nuclear weapons, bio-weapons, etc.
Things like parallel construction would have to stop though. Or be considered an immediate dismissal.