I would encourage readers to see Moxie Marlinspike's essay on this subject. The thesis is that the ability to capriciously and selective prosecute anyone is stiffing to dissent, and prevents political change. Students of recent US history understand that this is far from purely theoretical.
"if everyone’s every action were being monitored, and everyone technically violates some obscure law at some time, then punishment becomes purely selective. Those in power will essentially have what they need to punish anyone they’d like, whenever they choose, as if there were no rules at all.
Even ignoring this obvious potential for new abuse, it’s also substantially closer to that dystopian reality of a world where law enforcement is 100% effective, eliminating the possibility to [directly] experience alternative ideas that might better suit us."
Edit: To be clear, I think you make good point that privacy laws won't save you from a subpoena. However, they are probably useful for other reasons; this was why warrants and other notions of due process were created to begin with, including the requirement that a warrant or subpoena be limited in scope to that material which is relevant to a particular charge or investigation. I think one big problem today is that people are ordered to surrender "everything on your phone and cloud", etc. This is at least equivalent to search warrant for "your filing cabinet", if not "everything you have ever written or said."
This is very interesting. We surrender, for example, to the posibility of preventing the suffering of people by the acts of others becouse that, would make us dystopian.
Respectfully, did you read the article? The thesis is that dragnet surveillance is stifling to political change and may result in an ossified society. There are trade-offs other then security vs safety.
But privacy laws can prevent things from being stored, and thus reducing their ability to be gathered by subpoenas etc, particularly some n years later.
There are quite a few lines one has to cross before subpoenas and similar that don't exist with a cloud provider, employer, ex-wife, contractor, hacker, etc.
