&gt; The slightly less cynical view is that they know that the next time something happens they know that - if encryption is involved, they will be absolutely pilloried by the popular press, opposition etc. for &quot;not doing everything that can be done&quot;.<p>And the slightly more cynical view is that they are using the attacks to push through legislation that they wanted for other reasons <i>AND</i> they&#x27;re using a story of hypothetical public opinion after hypothetical future events to make themselves seem more sympathetic.<p>And this is also not this is &quot;doing everything that can be done.&quot;  The Paris attackers didn&#x27;t even use encryption and the attacks were not prevented, so there&#x27;s a lot more things that they&#x27;d need to do before banning Tor and open wifi would even make a difference.  So they&#x27;d still open to criticism from the same angle; score one for cynicism.