The cops are free to get a warrant and use whatever tools they have in their arsenal.

as our social life makes more and more use of digital communication, it must have the same protections as a face to face conversation in my home.

in germany wiretapping is only allowed for serious crimes and home surveillance is even more restricted.

in other words if digital communication gets the same protection as home surveillance then you can just use that home surveillance or try to install a listening tool on the persons phone. if home surveillance is not possible then why should digital surveillance be any easier?

> private face-to-face conversations do not allow for effective coordination of actions across large distances. <snip> this kind of messaging and a conversation are not the same thing.

Technology allows it. The same way it allows for myriad other applications that technology has made possible via extension of a base capability. I would argue that the technological ability extend 'topic X' makes it close enough to "the same thing".

If a Government has a problem with an app because it allows private conversation between physically distant individuals, then that Government likely also has a problem with private conversations between non-physically distant individuals. They just won't mention that because it's transparently obviously authoritarian.

The 'technology' angle only has political play because there will always be a core contingent of society that is scared enough of technology to have a much louder voice than their numbers would indicate.

ie warrants and wire taps and physically breaking in to buildings and safes could be done to anyone at any time, but not everyone, at the same time, all the time, from afar, without even being seen.

It's disingenuous to rationalize or excuse one without acknowledging the other.

And even the old form of the right and ability to break in to any safe still didn't magically un-burn a paper, so that argument against encryption was never valid.

Devils advocate is a critical role, but in this case it only serves the valuable role of showing that no matter how hard one tries, there is no validity to authoritarian/statist attacks on encryption, or indeed any self-actualized tech.

There's no fundamental difference between a conversation in a meadow and one online.