> This is about guiding principles, about personal liberty, and about freedom from tyranny.

The point he’s trying to make, as I understand it, is that states adapt. They don’t just throw up their hands and say “guess we can’t do anything about that encrypted traffic.”

The response to distributed kinetic kill capability in the US, for example, is for police to become more militarized and treat every encounter as a potentially lethal one.

> There's private, and there's not private. There is nothing in between

It’s not an argument about privacy per se, it’s highlighting that the stronger the protections against state surveillance and intervention, the stronger the state becomes. By taking an absolutionist stance, we push our institutions to towards the same in response.

I’m not making an argument or against encryption or privacy, just pointing out the systemic effects.

I finished the article. My own bad prediction: If FOSS "dies" it will continue to thrive in 3rd world countries, where no one bothers to administer punishment for the heinous crime of not letting your government's LLM read every word you type. The 1st world will ignore all this until it becomes apparent that the (former) 3rd world countries are suddenly in a position to economically surpass everyone else, and at that point the wise will see that their desire to keep a stranglehold on online activity was actually a bad idea that allowed their dominance to wane and wither.

> Ever heard of Meredith Whittaker?

The fact that you name one makes her very rare indeed.