Aren't these the same thing to the technology? To someone labeled a criminal, the government doing so is an abusive government. To a government that considers itself right, those who don't follow the rules are criminals.

We each have our own personal views on what should and should not be allowed which we judge individual cases with, but technology does not have a sense of morality to make such judgment as to when the criminal is in the right and when the government is in the right.

I think people far too often try to humanize computer algorithms with notions of right and wrong. The technology to avoid and oppressive regime is the exact same technology that protects the horrible person from justice.

However, I don't think that's the case at all. We can see in the real world there are many ways to strike a balance between safety and privacy.

So how would this work online? "We have private chats, but the government can look into any of them at any time"? I suppose it depends on your definition of privacy ... are your chats still private if I'm unable to see them but your friendly neighborhood police department reads them?