Police State

Government will not allow ubiquitous encryption.

"I read that Apple and Google have begun encrypting the data of customers so that nobody, including Apple and Google, have plaintext access to it. This of course means “so that the government will not have access to it.” The FBI is terribly upset about this, the first serious resistance against onrushing Orwellianism. God bless Apple and Google. But will they be able to stand up to the feds?
Here is a curious situation indeed. The government has become our enemy, out of  control, and we have to depend on computer companies for any safety we may have."

Google and Apple know good and well that the government won't allow their encryption to stand. They're doing this to fix their reputations for being partners with the surveillance state.

"The feds—whatever the intention of individuals—are setting up the machinery of a totalitarianism beyond anything yet known on the earth. It falls rapidly into place. You can argue, if you are optimistic enough to make Pollyanna look like a Schopenhaurian gloom-monger, that they would never use such powers. They already do. The only question is how far they will push. What cannot be argued is that they have the powers"

The took them for a reason.

"The crucial question: Do we have more to fear from largely imaginary terrorists, or from the FBI? Your chances of being killed by terrorists are essentially zero, even if you live in Washington or New York, and far less if you live in Memphis or Raleigh-Durham. (To express this we need the concept of negative zero, which I hearwith offer to the mathmatical community.) Your chances of living in an electronically locked-down police state are very high. This is far more dangerous to what the United States was than even a successful bombing of a mall."

That's a false choice. The police state makes us more likely to be killed by terrorists, not less.

"Those at the policy level are another thing.  Many are intelligent, some extremely so. They understand not just the laws, but law. Many have educations of the first quality. Harvard was not always a prep school for I-banking. They are familiar with history, understand the philosophy of constitutional government, and understand the consequences of our current direction. They know what they are doing. And keep doing it."

That's right. They're evil, not stupid.

The FBI has Boston Marathon suspect #2's attorneys under surveillance and is intimidating its witnesses.

"Domestic defense mitigation investigation has been conducted amid a growing atmosphere of anxiety and agitation generated by highly-publicized arrests, indictments, prosecutions, deportations (and, in one instance, the FBI killing) of members of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s peer groups."

Just what you'd expect from a police state.

"Most news reports brush over that last part. As if shooting to death an unarmed man involved in this case—as an FBI agent did to Tamerlan’s friend Ibragim Todashev—is not relevant to the difficulties the defense team has had in getting witnesses to talk to them. But even less extreme events are enough to silence potential witnesses, such as the mysterious closing of their bank accounts."

Probably not mysterious.

"“These difficult circumstances are compounded by a continuing pattern of aggressive FBI re-interviewing of potential witnesses — on occasion within hours of an attempted contact by defense investigator [emphasis added].”"

Just watching is intimidating.