[choward]

This article is pure rubbish.

> If terrorists or child abusers or other criminals use the app, or one like it, to coordinate activities or share child sexual abuse imagery behind impenetrable closed doors, that’s a shame — but privacy is all that matters.

Using the classic "think of the children" and "OMG, terrorism!" arguments is always what these people use to scare people into accepting authoritarianism. So uncreative.

> One should always worry when a person or an organization places one value above all. [...] unwavering support of one principle to rule them all is morally dangerous.

This guy is just making stuff up. Does anyone actually think like this? He then providers the worst argument of all time:

> What’s more, the company’s proposition that if anyone has access to data, then many unauthorized people probably will have access to that data is false.

> There are some people who have access to the nuclear launch codes, but “Mission Impossible” movies aside, we’re not particularly worried about a slippery slope leading to lots of unauthorized people having access to those codes.

How does nuclear launch codes even compare to people's personal data? You have to get clearance and all kinds of things for that. Nothing like that exists for private companies holding your data. Has this genius not heard of the Twitter Files or the other countless examples of the government abusing its power?

> I am drawing attention to Signal, but there’s a bigger issue here: Small groups of technologists are developing and deploying applications of their technologies for explicitly ideological reasons, with those ideologies baked into the technologies.

He only wants large corporations being in control of technology so the government can more easily illegally spy on people. So ridiculous.

> But Signal embeds within itself a rather extreme conception of privacy

Privacy is now extreme?

> If one of the complaints about Big Tech and Big Government is that they are insufficiently accountable for their misdeeds, can we not levy the same critique against the technologists?

Because big government and big tech are the ones in power right now. They're the ones breaking the law. If you find out that "technologists" are breaking the law then go after them for real crimes instead of thought crimes. Stop punching down.

> They are a small group of people who govern these powerful tools, and they are not accountable in the way that, say, a democratically elected government is.

He's saying only elected officials should get to choose what software exists. And the Signal developers are accountable, they're accountable to the law.

> Whether law enforcement should tap our phones on the condition that a warrant is obtained is, at the very least, worthy of public discussion. Signal has unilaterally decided for us all.

This is so absurd. They made an app and didn't break any laws. We don't need public discussion for if you're allowed to make an app.

Law enforcement is still free to do they same things they were doing before. The can infiltrate groups just like they did before the modern era. I don't have to give up my freedom just to make their jobs easier.