I can&#x27;t help but feel you are being extraordinarily uncharitable to what I think is anything but a slavish attack on the tech sector, and rather a fairly accurate description of some of the issues it is going to face. This article does not in anyway advocate against encryption, and instead point out – completely correctly – that the increasing influence of tech companies in day-to-day life is going to mean they start coming under pressure in ways they have traditionally avoided.<p><i>tech doesn&#x27;t exist without encryption.</i><p>The Guardian is not arguing against encryption. It&#x27;s pointing out, completely correctly, that in increased availability of strong encryption raises issues that we have no yet dealt with.<p><i>It isn&#x27;t hard. The case is a right to privacy, which also happens to be a huge part of ANY tech company&#x27;s business. The reason we use so much tech these days is because of the privacy controls. Also, Snowden and others pointed out the FBI probably has all useful the information it could retrieve about this terrorist anyway, so the work phone is relatively useless.</i><p>I don&#x27;t agree – it <i>is</i> a difficult case to make. I happen to agree that access is not justified in this case, but it&#x27;s hardly completely obvious that this is the case.<p><i>Translation - &quot;tech companies are creating problems in modern life akin to oil companies&#x27; oil spills&quot;</i><p>No – this states, again quite correctly, that increased presence and use of the products provided by tech companies means that the decisions they make have wider impact. It&#x27;s a traditionally unregulated, not-really-seen-as-worthy-of-regulation sector, but as the decisions and events surrounding these companies gain more public awareness, there will be increased pressure to deal with the outcomes.<p><i>&quot;Tech companies are in a weak position and will probably lose this battle&quot;</i><p>Again, just no. This argument clearly points out that the FBI case has brought a simmering matter to a bit of a head, and that it&#x27;s difficult to see a way in which Apple will come out of it looking good. Either they are &quot;helping to shield terrorists&quot; or they are &quot;signing away customers&#x27; privacy&quot;.<p><i>&quot;What if&quot; sounds like the author is warning of impending doom on the tech sector.</i><p>That&#x27;s not an anti-tech, though. It&#x27;s a good point – what happens when something unambiguously bad happens in the future? The Guardian is not saying &quot;we can&#x27;t have encryption because this might happen&quot; – it&#x27;s saying &quot;This might happen in the future, how will tech companies cope?&quot;