Your comment reminded me of something so far back I don't see it mentioned anymore, from the Bill Clinton presidency years, called Carnivore. Here's an ACLU link to an Oct. 2000 article on it. From that:
"The Carnivore system -- essentially a computer running specialized software -- is attached to an Internet Service Provider's network and searches through all of its customers' electronic messages (including e-mail, web addresses and instant messages) looking for the messages of a person suspected of a crime.
The biased expert panel is part of what was to be an independent process grudgingly agreed to by the Justice Department to determine whether Carnivore violates the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures."
That sounds worse than the UK's 'back door' approach! And it was before the 9-11 terrorist attacks on American soil, with a Democrat President.
I've been researching NAS options lately, as I've never had one. A common feature discussed is that of having your own private cloud. And such a cloud would be platform agnostic (i.e.: not tired to Apple's 'walled garden' ecosystem, in case you ever migrated to a different platform).
Not only is it not a stupid question, it's a key question that needs more attention. We need for Apple's device syncing (e.g.: iMessages across your Mac, iPhone and iPad) to be made compatible with 3rd party NAS private cloud systems and end the iCloud exclusivity currently required for them to work.
That will threaten Apple's bottom line, so expect it to take a lot of grass roots rabble rousing and effort. Maybe if competing messaging platforms offer such operability and become serious competitors on this basis, Apple's hand might be forced?
I wish we could count on the goodness of Tim Cook's heart to give it to us, and I neither know the guy nor am I his judge, but if I had to guess, I'm thinking we need to push...hard.
There's an alternative explanation. What I'm about to describe to you was explained to me by someone else on the online forum Quora. It's understandable, passes the 'common sense' test and less sinister. The issue in question was why do authorities want more power? That can be the power of information (e.g.: wire-tapping, surveillance) or other forms. Is it a machiavellian plot by the Illuminati to conquer the world and control us all?
Or is it the convenience of (?lazy?) people?
His point was that most people have jobs, those jobs have responsibilities, and the burden of doing the job and executing those responsibilities gets onerous. With some jobs, actually doing everything you're technically supposed to do 'by the book' borders on impossible. Power is the ability to effect change in the universe, to get things done. You need power to do your job, and the more power you have, the easier your job tends to be.
So if you head a law enforcement agency responsible for fighting child porn and human trafficking, and you could have the information resources of the Clinton-era Carnivore system and the UK's back door option (let's go ahead and throw in at-will wire tapping without requiring probable cause or a court order!), would that help you do your job? Make it easier to do a better job? Detect crime faster, get better evidence more easily and secure higher conviction rates?
Yeah. There's an old adage 'Where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit.' If you are a cop or head a police department, the power and enhanced role performance might sound good to you. If you've seen some of the horrors of the child porn industry and human trafficking, objections based on potential government abuse of a 'surveillance state' might sound less concerning.
My point is that these lawmakers may have a problem to solve (maybe child porn and human trafficking, but whatever criminal activities they're concerned about), and this surveillance state power could help do that better with what looks like little cost (e.g.: way cheaper than hiring half again the cops, etc...).
And that's when an organized, informed citizenry and rival groups without those conflicts-of-interest step in and say yes, that's all true, and we're still not going to let you do it.
