<i>What I don&#x27;t get is one the one hand it&#x27;s too expensive for governments to do effective snooping (too much data to sift) but on the other hand trust would be broken because everyone could find anything... but governments would be incapable of finding information that same trust breaking information.</i><p>It&#x27;s possible for both to be true.  The price to snoop effectively is too high (wasting money), so either the government is wasting ridiculous amounts of money and violating everyone, or they&#x27;re not wasting the money, not catching terrorists, and just using the information to violate specific individuals.<p><i>despots already leave their populations unfed, the world keeps on going.</i><p>It&#x27;s the computers, not the food.<p><i>commerce happened before encryption. There hasn&#x27;t been good reliable and easy to use encryption till the last couple of years. it&#x27;s not as if the world hadn&#x27;t globalized despite that.</i><p>Encryption is essential to modern commerce.  Businesses and banks need to be able to transfer files between offices without fear that an unfriendly corporation, government, or hacker can intercept those files.  Customers need to be able to download software and send payment information to companies without having a virus inserted in the download or their payment details stolen.<p>There are also free speech, whistleblower, and related considerations that I don&#x27;t want to take the time to argue here.<p>But foremost, beyond all that it&#x27;s <i>still not established that forced MITM will reduce terrorism</i>.  That fundamental idea needs to be established first before any other factors are worth considering, and even then the net benefit to the world may still be greater with encryption than without.