Signal, ethics, privacy, and the war against nuance.

Signal provides more privacy and security than average, but law enforcement still has the power to unlock data if they get a warrant.

I like and use Signal, but if I thought there was zero way to retrieve and decrypt the data, even by law enforcement, I'd be uncomfortable with that. I want to know that the FBI can hunt down a kidnapper or stop a dirty bomb. I'm willing to risk spending a week working with my bank to reverse a fraudulent charge or have my stupid private comments and pictures leaked to someone sifting thru data at the CIA who doesn't care about my weird but harmless secret communique.

I'm also willing to put up with some advertiser trying to aim relevant ads at me if that's the cost of having a way for law enforcement to access criminal activities and avert disasters.

Laws and public policies — everyone has an opinion on this stuff. That's why the limits of privacy must be determined and resolved by our representative democracy, within the confines of our constitutional checks and balances, not solely by small groups of tech entrepreneurs and the people who like their products. Same is valid for the limits of free speech.

I see why saying this would piss you off, especially if you spend a lot of time worrying about identity theft or the embarrassment of your data leaking or don't like how the wind is blowing these days regarding your political leanings.

Plus, let's agree we all have personal stuff we don't want to be released. So I get it. I also get how phrases like "good governance" can irritate you if you're not so trusting of government institutions these days.

Is our government always perfect? No. Does it always please everyone, and has it ever? No. Is it the best system we have currently?

That's up to you.

For me, warts and all, our imperfect institutions are worth protecting. If we want to change them, we have to do so within the system itself, or we risk emboldening anyone who disagrees with anything to become fanatics who take the law into their own hands.

Do you want to open Pandora's box? No judgment; maybe you do. Revolutions have always occurred; the US was born with the Revolutionary War, and we won emancipation with the Civil War.

But it would be different and worse this time. You'd have a battle royal of every nut-job ideology raging outside your front door. Even if your cause is right, going about it without the rule of law will encourage millions of crazies to follow suit, launch dangerous products and do ridiculous things that infringe upon your rights.

As much as I'd love a fully anarchic or libertarian dream of total personal freedom, this is not our country. We don't get to pick and choose where anarchy applies. You want the government to keep their dirty paws away from Signal no matter what? Sorry, that’s not how this game is played.

Again, the Constitution outlines the rules for adjudicating policies. Is it perfect? Of course not. But if your views make you uncomfortable with the US, contribute to changing the laws peacefully or find another country. Check out the Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in Mexico – the closest thing we have on the planet to anarchy. Look into living there instead of whining about the nuanced op-ed in the New York Times by a well-meaning ethics professor whose whole MO seems to make data handling as ethical and private as possible.

He said he values privacy, but that it's naive and wrong to place one binding principle above all else without allowing for nuances and exceptions. He said that in the US, companies and their customers don’t legislate law, and yet sometimes they effectively do without us even noticing, and that we need to be on alert for that sort of thing. He's not wrong.