Senators want to give government access to encrypted communications

[Irate Canadian]

Lawmakers said it was time to intensify discussions over what technology companies such as Apple and Google could do to help unscramble key information on devices such as Iphones and apps like WhatsApp, where suspected terrorists have communicated. Those companies made changesthe Senate passage of a bill

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...bat-terrorism/

[Jedidiah]

But it is for our own safety!

[Starlight]

Unfortunately experience shows that such spying does not appear to provide sufficient intelligence to stop individuals from carrying out terrorist attacks, and/or authorities are unwilling to act when given the information.

Thus far, despite dragnet spying in the US, authorities have stopped zero terrorist attacks through the use of such spying. The situation in France appears to be that the authorities were already spying on the suspects, and the suspects managed to go ahead and carry out attacks anyway.

More and more information keeps coming to light about how the Bush Administration was extensively briefed by the CIA repeatedly about Bin Laden's intentions but flatly rejected a CIA proposal on 10th July 2001 to send a special strike force to Afghanistan to take out Bin Laden, and instead Bush fled D.C. and hid out on his ranch in Texas for a month in one of the longest 'vacations' of any president, while continuing to receive daily briefings from the CIA about how Bin Laden was determined to strike the US. When the political elites refuse to take action in response to what their spies tell them, what's the point of spying in the first place? After 9/11 the popular narrative called it an "intelligence failure" (which, I guess, it was... just a different type of "intelligence" failure) and the Patriot Act got passed to spy on everyone... which was totally disingenuous given the lack of spying had not been at all the cause of the problem. At issue instead was the Bush administration's bizarre fixation on the imagined threat posed by Saddam in Iraq, and its obstinate refusal to take seriously the threat that the CIA repeatedly informed it that Bin Laden posed (Bush's infamous response to the Aug 6 briefing about the imminent Bin Laden threat was to tell the CIA officials "All right, you've covered your ass now" and to take the rest of the day off work and go fishing).

Spying seems to basically just cause a giant violation of privacy and rights, without ever having returned successful results.

[Adam]

It's a weird attack on U. S. spying techniques to prevent terrorism that there has been NO big terrorism event for over 14 years!
Where's your high-five for that?
(Which I admit has nothing to do with the constitutionality or ultimate safety (from tyranny, totalitarianism) of taking the leash off the CIA and other spy-masters.)

[Leonhard]

"In other news senators propose outlawing discrete mathematics, as it instructs people in how to make their own encryption schemes." (sarcasm mode)

[Joel]

So "proponents of cybersecurity" complain that encrypted cyber communication is too secure?