I think this needs to be expressed more often. Not only will draconian regimes now allow it, but it's also harder to protect such systems at the ends. I saw a presentation by cperciva at some point that talked about the "Three B's": Bribery, Burglary and Blackmail. So tech should be one of many tools to combat oppressive societal structure - some other ones being more social and legal tools.

The concept of the "three Bs" has been around for longer than I have. In my talk ("everything you need to know about cryptography in one hour") I added a fourth B, "guantanamo Bay", aka. torture.

guantanamo bay is pretty lame in comparison to what other oppressive regimes will do.

I would suggest changing it to something more direct like "Breaking kneecaps" or something along those lines.

Either that, or they will simply intimidate and even torture people for their private keys.

May sound far-fetched, but it isn't.

Force them to intimidate and torture at least one side of every communication they want, instead of letting them intimidate and torture three or four centralized service operators to get everybody's communication.

Far-fetched?

Not in the UK, for example.

> The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), Part III, activated by ministerial order in October 2007,[20] requires persons to supply decrypted information and/or keys to government representatives with a court order. Failure to disclose carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail. The provision was first used against animal rights activists in November 2007,[21] and at least three people have been prosecuted and convicted for refusing to surrender their encryption keys,[22] one of whom was sentenced to 13 months' imprisonment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/538/