An oversimplification. The US, UK, and allies variously broke many cipher systems throughout WWII. Still the US benefitted from this.

What if the Germans were using, say, Windows, Android phones, SSL, Gmail, Yahoo, and Skype, instead of Enigma machines?

I presume you wouldn't say it was "wrong" of the United States to crack the German and Japanese codes in WWII...

...so when US adversaries (and lets just caveat this by saying people YOU, personally, agree are legitimate US adversaries) don't use their own "codes", but instead share the same systems, networks, services, devices, cloud providers, operating systems, encryption schemes, and so on, that Americans and much of the rest of the world uses, would you suggest that they should be off limits?

This isn't so much a law enforcement question as a question of how to do SIGINT in the modern digital world, but given the above, and given that intelligence requires secrecy in order to be effective, how would you suggest the United States go after legitimate targets? Or should we not be able to, because that power "might" be able to be abused -- as can any/all government powers, by definition?

This simplistic view that the only purpose of the government in a free and democratic society must be to somehow subjugate, spy on, and violate the rights of its citizens is insane, while actual totalitarian and non-free states, to say nothing of myriad terrorist and other groups, press their advantage. And why wouldn't they? The US and its ever-imperfect system of law is not the great villain in the world.

Take a step back and get some perspective. And this is not a rhetorical question: if someone can tell me their solution for how we should be able to target technologies that are fundamentally shared with innocent Americans and foreigners everywhere while still keeping such sources, methods, capabilities, and techniques secret, I'm all ears. And if you believe the second a technology is shared it should become magically off-limits because power might be abused, you are insane -- or, more to the point, you believe you have some moral high ground which, ironically, would actually result in severe disadvantages for the system of free society you would claim to support.

What galls me the most is the panty-wetting over a government-granted monopoly trying to maintain its government granted monopoly when that very same government tries to compete using taxpayer dollars as a subsidy.

The outrage should be against government involvement period. If governments didn't grant local monopolies, there would be real competition among the real companies, and no perceived need for the government competition which is only competitive because it has the taxpayer subsidy.

How can anyone pay lip service to free markets by regulating them?

The problem is that government regulates them as monopolies. They create the problem in the first lace by creating the monopoly, then offer to fix the problem by adding regulation. If it were a truly free market, without government sponsored monopolies, regulation wouldn't be nessary.

Look up the history of AT&T, how they were acting like a bully, but when the lawsuits began to have an effect and counter their actions, they begged the government to regulate them as a monopoly. If the government had just said no, they would have been brought to heel within a few years; the market would have worked.

It never ceases to amaze me how often I am amazed at people who cannot grasp this simple concept, that government specialized in correcting problems it created. Even that great social experiment, US alcohol prohibition from 1920-1933, was not ended by repealing the prohibition, but by changing outright prohibition to regulation.

They would get them back and then punish them and then separate them.

Exactly. If that's what he deserves, then truth will out.

And I have seen an awful lot of people saying that he wasn't worth any particular effort to get back, which is pretty close to "let him rot." That's just mind-boggling to me.

Heh. Yeah.

I was at Minot for five years, which seemed particularly like exile after having been in England, about an hour away from London, for two years before that. I will say that it wasn't quite as bad as I expected it to be when I got my orders.

Were you at Dover? I've always heard that's kind of the East Coast's equivalent of Minot. [1/2 g]

So in that sense this is the most elegant natural solution.

The right to privacy is unimplementable. It basically requires hiding the truth on a massive individualized scale, and cannot be done.

If one were to attempt hiding one or a few particular truths, it might be successful for a short while, but it would be like the Soviets airbrushing former leaders out of pictures. The truth will resurface sooner or later.

And as soon as you mandate the right to be forgotten, every punk and his dog will want to protect their privacy too -- why should it be reserved only for the rich and powerful? Not only will the resultant holes in truth became ever more blatant, but the only way to hide the truth is manpower intensive, just like airbrushing people out of all those pictures. You can't automate it -- not only would it miss indirect references and intentional subterfuge, it will erase false positives and raise the ire of its false victims.

I am watching this EU court ruling with a metric boatload of popcorn. Most legislation is pretty clueless when it comes to unintended consequences, btu this one is spectacularly so.

Dang, I was going to say the same thing.

Close to the same argument I use with people who rail against dams. What about beavers? If humans throw logs and rocks and mud across a stream just like beavers, is that unnatural or natural, good or bad, politically correct or not? What if they make it out of boards instead of cut down trees? What is it's teh exact same size, but concrete? How about half the size in concrete?

I repeat, legal oppression only exists because of government. If you cannot see that simple truth, you are wilfully blind.

Primogeniture and entailment were government laws which enforced class distinctions and warfare -- withotu government creation and enforcement of classes, there would be no class oppression and warfare.

Government laws prevented women from owning property, voting, or having much freedom at all, and made marriage rape legal.

Slavery and segregation were the direct result of government laws. Society was integrating on its own until government stopped it and reversed course.

It's very simple: government creates laws to justify its oppression. You claim to get your history from the People's History. It's not much of a history if that single lesson doesn't come through loud and clear.

People care about people. Governments do not. Any one who thinks the government is his friend is either a crony or a fool, possibly both. Governments' mission is to compel or prohibit; their core competence is coercion in the name of the status quo.

Before government made black self-defense illegal and enforced bigotry with government guns, blacks at least had a chance. Society was at least slowly intergrating even in the face of government sanctioned lynching, before government stepped in officially and made it illegal, backed by government guns and jails. The US Post office and military were more integrated than most people realize, until Woodrow Wilson came along and enforced segregation. That Louisian railroad was just one of many companies who integrated in pursuit of the amlighty dollar, until governments came along and stopped them with government guns and jail.

Progressives are an ignorant whiny lot, like all statists. All power to the government! The people, not so much.

BULLSHIT. Slavery and Jim Crow were both the RESULT of government laws. Neither can exist in the absence of government. Jim Crow in particular owes its existence to a Louiana law requiring a railroad to segregate its railroad cars against its own wishes, said law being approved by the US Supreme Court.

You need to learn a lot of history before opening your yap next time.