Wiretapping the Internet: Giving Weapons of Mass Destruction to Idiots

Various jurisdictions around the world have lawful-intercept implementations and even require ISPs to implement these. In the U.S., lawful intercept capabilities on Internet infrastructure are a legal requirement under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)

This is done wholly for the common good, and to protect your law-abding citizens against online money scams, illegitimate porn, child abuse and seeking terrorist activity. The problem: A substantial part of our population consists of idiots, and that doesn't stop at the doors of your local law-enforcement agency.

To the IRS we are all tax-avoiders, and to the police everyone is a criminal until proven otherwise. You need thugs to beat thugs, and in their hunger to go after every crime, and their in incapability to often do so, your average cop will fabricate evidence, cross-use lawful wiretapping to wiretap other cases, use break-and-entry when not permitted, resort to lies, libel and slander to incite witch hunts, provoke crimes -even legal in some countries,- send innocent people to jail, or even degrade, mutilate or kill people all in a day's work.

It depends on your country, maybe you do feel safer if your police can spy on you. But, if you live in a wealthy country like I do, where the average biggest crime daily committed is by a set of ducks causing a traffic jam, you might end up sending your own anti-social family to jail since mom cheated once, daddy got bored and looked at some boobs, daughter did a research project on online terrorism, son used an illegal credit-card list to pay his online gambling habit, and your neighbour was smart enough to break the wep-encryption of the wireless access point to satisfy his own extreme needs.

It may come as a surprise to you, but given everything, the biggest criminal organization in your vicinity is probably your law-enforcement agency, and yes, you do have stuff to hide. It's called your freedom.

The US model of shooting everything on sight, probably isn't that bad.