U.S. Senate bill crafted with DEA targets end-to-end encryption
The DEA was invented as part of the most successful effort in human history to create a totalitarian police state, and it is no surprise that they want to further clamp down on civil liberties at a national level<p>Drug enforcement was always a massive totalitarian project, has destroyed millions of lives, and continues to make the world a more dangerous and less free place for nearly everyone. It is both incredibly unethical and, from the perspective of its purported aims of actually reducing the harms of drug use, a massive policy failure at every level (though if you agree with me that its true purpose is a police state, it is an incredible success).<p>It's not just users of so-called "street drugs" that suffer, it is everyone who has to interact with the massive police state we have built, or receive any medical treatment. Even very privileged people who have never used an illegal drug can run afoul of the kafkaesque rules about identifying "drug-seeking" behavior, even if they are spared the worst of the violent enforcement apparatus that has ravaged countless neighborhoods and communities throughout the world as police departments have become more and more powerful paramilitary organizations with more carte blanche mandate to search for an ever-widening array of substances in people's private property, up to and including their bodies.<p>As with most things, the outcomes this puts on the majority of the people affected are much, much worse. Drug enforcement has destroyed countless lives for the mere act of possessing substances - or sometimes even equipment associated with their use or manufacture - that any enemy, especially anyone with official authority, can easily plant on someone. It is the primary driving factor for the unprecedented incarceration rates of the US in particular and has also through second-order effects ravaged the economies, infrastructure, and communities of numerous other countries in the massive US sphere of influence<p>If we purport to care about things like civil liberties or human rights, the continued existence of drug enforcement is an emergency situation that has been actively on fire for a very long time. We need to repeal the Controlled Substances Act and every piece of legislation that has ever resulted from it. Deciding what drugs consenting adults can use on themselves should never have been the purview of the government, and the harms of this have grown worse every year for nearly half a century. The DEA is a key and irredeemable part of that. You can't expect a monster you created to eat people's faces to suddenly voluntarily stop