But we shouldn't be having this argument over and over because some people didn't like the way it turned out the first time. We need, as a society, to find a way to limit the ability of lawmakers to turn around a scant two years later with some new approach to pushing their shot down proposal through.

It's a devious exhaustion tactic and it's unethical (without commenting on the bill itself, which I find abhorrent to a free and just society)

Nobody should have to walk common ground with the likes of the CIA and NSA. They should have to walk common ground with us. Whatever people decide, they should obey unquestioningly and without complaint. We don't want to hear about how encryption makes their job harder. They need to deal with it and stop trying to undermine our freedoms. It's honestly offensive that they're trying to regulate this stuff for the nth time despite public resistance.

We owe no apology to anyone. They're the ones trying to undermine the whole world's security and freedom. They've grown addicted to total access and want to maintain their power which they frequently abuse. Nothing will ever justify it, certainly not their constant "but it makes our job harder" sob story.

Perhaps not, but the parent did say that one purpose is to prevent the abuse of power.

And sure, someone might follow up with "but I trust my elected officials/police/FBI/etc. not to abuse power". But then you can provide examples of times when that trust was misplaced. Or point out that elected officials are elected in and out and law enforcement officers quit/retire and are hired all the time, and the incoming people might not be so trustworthy.

So yeah, "this is how it's supposed to be in order to prevent the abuse of power" may not be a complete, ironclad argument, but it's a good jumping-off point to further discussion.

>this is how it’s supposed to be” is not a productive argument

It is nevertheless, the correct argument that is at the heart of the issue.

It needs to be had over and over again until it finally gets through the bureaucrats heads that no; your convenience does not outweigh fundamental freedom from panoptic surveillance.

Why isn't it a productive argument? This is a question about what goals society should optimize towards. There's no amount of objective measurements that can determine the relative worth of cheaper policing compared with decreased privacy.

The only way for such an argument to proceed is to convince enough people that such a trade results in a world not being how it is supposed to be.

TL;DR: This argument lies on the "ought" side of Hume's is-ought distinction [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

I wasn’t familiar with the is-ought problem, thanks! I think in this case, I was commenting on the parents presumption that the their “ought” was a universally shared (or even widely shared) axiom. In that sense stating one’s belief without defending it is not really an argument at all (in that it’s not persuasive), and therefore (in my opinion) not as productive as starting from a more universally held common ground.

No problem, and I'm glad that it helped! It's a useful distinction for determining what type of arguments will be useful to make. If two people agree on goals, but differ on the ways to reach those goals, then "is" arguments are useful. If two people disagree on goals, then there isn't yet any common ground on which to have that conversation, and the first step is to have an "ought" conversation to find common ground.

(This is also simplifying a bit, as there are cases where differing goals can have the same next steps. An apolitical example would be a temporary alliance in a board game, where you and I team up to stop a third player from winning. Our long-term goals differ, as each of us wants to win for ourselves, but our short-term goals align at stopping the third player.)

Why should we give an inch to these people when they have been shown to violate the publics’ trust many many times?

You're exactly wrong.

The Constitution Of the United States, which I believe in unswervingly-- was written at a time when privacy was the DEFAULT. Any person could walk into any building or any field and speak, anonymously to another person. It cost quite a bit to spy on someone and that was a natural limit to how much spying could be done.

The argument from the other side is always-- the framers didn't imagine a world where everyone is carrying around a device that spies on them and they didn't happen to imagine a dystopian future where people are paying corporations to spy on them with unimaginable devices, so, we should be allowed to do that.

Politely, fudge that.

I think you misunderstand my position as well as who you need to convince. It’s not angry people who vehemently believe that we need more surveillance. It’s apathy. Why should I care?

(I do care, and like I mentioned in my original comment, I agree with the parent).

> Constitution Of the United States, which I believe in unswervingly

What does that mean?

Meanwhile, I don't really feel like there was much privacy back when the constitution was written. What makes you think there was?

there wasn't even .uch in the way of federal law enforcement.

Any type of eavesdroppi g would have to be done via tge post, which to this day has better confidentiality guarantees because USPS is one of the only service providers to which Third Party Doctrine does not apply for auto-negating expectations of privacy.

if you were investigated, it would have to be by a local law enforcement official. There was no cross-referencing of biometrics, fingerprints, or driver's licenses across state lines.

There were no license plates to track. When they were eventuallu implemented, it would be decades before data stores were implemented that allowed real-time tracking via ALPR.

It was, in fact, not a given or even remotely a given that it was considered technically possible to localize or pin down an individual without one or more individuals being engaged in the act of tailing.

There is no question that at the timeof the signing of the Constitution, the world had a much higher degree of privacy by default.