> You can't put a secret agent in a room with a bunch of nefarious terrorists anymore, because those terrorists don't sit in a room with each other. They talk on Telegram.
So you... put some secret agents on Telegram to infiltrate the terrorists. In the same way as you got into the room with them before people had portable phones. You bug their phones in the same way as you used to bug their rooms -- through physical access. Which is effective but expensive, and so it works against terrorists and serious criminals but not for mass surveillance.
> When the nation falls to all the other nations' intelligence apparatuses and covert operations, you will decry it and ask why the government did nothing to stop it.
If we actually had sufficiently secure communications to ward off our own intelligence agencies, why would some other country's have any more luck? Preventing theirs from working against us is good.
So you... put some secret agents on Telegram to infiltrate the terrorists. In the same way as you got into the room with them before people had portable phones. You bug their phones in the same way as you used to bug their rooms -- through physical access. Which is effective but expensive, and so it works against terrorists and serious criminals but not for mass surveillance.
> When the nation falls to all the other nations' intelligence apparatuses and covert operations, you will decry it and ask why the government did nothing to stop it.
If we actually had sufficiently secure communications to ward off our own intelligence agencies, why would some other country's have any more luck? Preventing theirs from working against us is good.