[angry_octet]

A court order is just a hurdle that legislation (or a constitutional provision) dicatates, in the investigation of crime (or prevention of future crime...). The distinction is the rights of the individual vs the rights of other individuals in the dilute sense we call society.

The problem is that individuals no longer have confidence in their institutions, for both good reasons (official corruption, motivated prosecutors, the dissolution of norms of executive behaviour) and bad ones (propaganda on Fox News, and the long tail of disinformation online).

The question becomes: how can citizens have confidence their rights will be protected? What structure would protect the right to privacy?

[p-e-w]

The only reliable way to protect rights is to limit power, and the only reliable way to protect fundamental rights is to limit power with absolute prohibitions.

This was well understood in the decades following WW2, and many countries implemented protections of this kind, only to roll them back again later when people had forgotten why they existed, and believed once more that everything will be fine as long as the “right” actors were in power.

[angry_octet]

In the US there is now the insane situation that the executive operates with the assumption of a pardon if they break the law, and if you attempt to prevent federal employees breaking the law, or even observe them or protest them, they might kill you extra legally, shielded from prosecution or punishment.

Structurally, that means the law must require consequences for cooperating participants (telcos, state agencies, subcontractors, IT providers and Apple/Google), and ultimately it will be the end of the Presidential individually exercised pardon power.