I think everyone would prefer that, however you have to consider that there have been roughly 100 deaths from terrorist attacks in this country since 11/9/2001, that's what, 6 deaths a year approx, in 2010 600 people died falling down the stairs, in the grand scheme of things horiffic as it may be Terrorists should really be the least of the average persons worries, should we really throw away civil liberties and privacy rights over something that is statistically 100 times less dangerous than a flight of stairs? That is assuming that this would prevent 100% of all deaths from terrorist attacks.
I think it's worth saying yet again that there's no evidence to support the idea that it would prevent
any terrorist attacks. Communication of any kind, encrypted or not, isn't necessary for a lone wolf attack and those are far more likely than an organised conspiracy. Also, encryption algorithms aren't necessary for encrypted communication. Encryption has been used for millenia before computers existed. Also, encryption per se isn't necessary for encrypted communication. You can use steganography, which is secure even if read in plain text. And finally, no method of obscuring speech is really required - they can just talk to each other in a mosque, in a house, wherever.
If the plans of May et alia were to be carried out, it would break modern society in the UK by cutting it off from the rest of the world and break the UK economy by making it an unsafe place to do any business in. It would, for example, be outright illegal for any company in the EU to do business in the UK unless they had a completely autonomous UK division with no connection to the EU at all because the planned UK deliberate lack of security would make it illegal to expose any information about anyone in the EU to the UK. Even for countries where it wouldn't be illegal, it would be foolishly risky. If you
knew your customers would all be compromised if you did business in the UK and at least some of them would be victims of fraud and harassment as a result and your business would be the conduit that they would blame for it...would you do business in the UK?
That degree of harm in exchange for the possibility of perhaps maybe saving 1 or 2 lives per year but probably not even that many if any at all. More people would die as a result of the collapse of the UK economy, so it would kill more people than it might possibly maybe have saved (which is probably nobody anyway because there's no reason to believe it would have any beneficial effect at all). The loss of money would reduce healthcare, which would kill people. It would reduce infrastucture spending, which would kill people. It would reduce health and safety as corners are cut, which would kill people. It would increase terrorism as more people have worse lives and it would increase successful terrorist attacks because of further cuts to the law enforcement methods that actually work and because analysts would be swamped with irrelevant data. Blanket surveillance is what the authorities do if they want more control over those they rule. Targetted surveillance is what they do if they want to prevent crime. Different tactics for different purposes.
