The answer to this question is why the US must resist the mass invasion of government into our private lives. For many other issues, people from around the world still answer the question "where would you go" with the US.
In the US we actually have a chance to push back on our rights and enshrine them constitutionally. For the US this must be the end goal of the discussion on the privacy and encryption discussion. Protecting and clarifying existing rights, 1st, 4th, 5th all apply here and the courts should uphold them in the face of the executive branch and commercial interests pushing invasion into normalcy.
If we fail to protect those rights and clarify their meaning in the 21st century the answer to the question "But where will you go" will be "there is no place to go".
The result of these kinds of policies is brain drain. The people you are trying to ban the actions of are both some of the most driven and outspoken in the world, and also some of the most economically desirable in the world. If you prevent them from investigating their pet projects in their homeland, they will simply go and do it in another country, because it's not an obstacle for them. There's a tonne of countries out there that would gladly roll out the red carpet for a tech exodus from the former commonwealth states.
You think the governments of Ukraine, Mexico, Hungary, and Argentina ask nicely when it comes to this?
Hungary is a borderline dictatorship. Ukraine is a war-torn mess, and then some. Mexico is one of the most corrupt countries, with little to no history of respecting individual rights. Argentina just nearly became a failed state on par with Venezuela (the verdict is not yet in on whether they've avoided that outcome).
Half of that list is terrible and entirely unrealistic. Silicon Valley developers are not going to Hungary and Mexico.
As a German I do know about what the Stasi did. The thing is that most Germans don't acknowledge the relationship between what was going on then and what is going on now.
I don't know a single (German) person outside of tech who thinks anything they (ordinarily) do online or on their smartphone could be used against them in one way or another.
Some may complain about the government but they didn't change their habits when it comes to using their smartphone or laptop. They don't realize that, for instance, every picture they add to facebook will train algorithms that could be used for all kind of purposes.
President Gauck doesn't think it is valid to compare the Stasi and the NSA
> Gauck wehrt sich gegen Vergleich der NSA mit der Stasi
Das erklärt auch, warum er in dem Interview jeden Vergleich zwischen den Methoden der Stasi und den Aktivitäten der NSA weit zurückweist. Die Stasi habe wie jeder Geheimdienst in einer Diktatur "Krieg gegen das eigene Volk geführt". Sie habe die Bürger bespitzelt, um diese Bespitzelungen gegen die Bürger zu richten. Davon könne aktuell nicht die Rede sein. "Hier sprechen wir von einer Gefahr für die Demokratie innerhalb der Demokratie."
And Chanchelor Merkel declared data the "raw material of the 21th century"
and urged Germans to rethink their position on privacy
> Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel hat Daten als "Rohstoffe des 21. Jahrhunderts" bezeichnet. "Hier müssen wir jetzt aufpassen, dass der Datenschutz nicht die Oberhand über die wirtschaftliche Verarbeitung gewinnt", sagte die CDU-Politikern am Montag in Berlin beim Verlegerkongress Publishers' Summit.
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it"
Thanks for elaborating. I feel somewhat foolish trying to tell a German about the Stasi. On the internet we assume everyone is an American - well unless you're the NSA watching in which case it's definitely not domestic surveillance ;-)
As a European of 30+ years, I am actually pretty optimistic in that there is, in all areas of politics, a certain point at which EU governments will refuse to follow the US down the rabbit hole.
Germany feels pretty strongly about privacy (albeit not absolute privacy), and I doubt that they will start passing laws just "because the US did it".
UK, I'll give you that. Then again, the UK is culturally closer to the US than to mainland Europe in many ways, this being one of them.
I'm a bit less optimistic. Take the recent seizure of Cock.li servers in Germany [1].
Regardless of what you think of the Cock.li service or its owner, the seizure of all the company's emails suggests that demands from police authorities or politicians take precedence over data privacy concerns - even in privacy-conscious Germany.
I hope / believe this is true. And then the EU will be the beneficiaries of being the countries best situated to provide technological devices and services without weakened security.
The two biggest political parties in the UK are both broadly pro-surveillance and see things like the ECHR as an annoyance. As elsewhere the majority of the public in the UK is disinterested. The vocal minority are ignored or outvoted.
Switzerland is also quite adamant in protecting privacy. And from what I hear a great place to start a business.
As for UK, from what I understand they have an open channel with US in terms of information exchange for anti-terrorism. Perhaps due to that it's expected from them to follow suit with US in legislation if they want to stay in the same terms. That would probably extend to a few other countries who are in such a privileged relationship.
Germany, for instance, looks rather pro privacy at the moment. But I am pretty sure they'd be some of the first to follow the UK/US.