We should prosecute crimes the way we always have: presumed innocence until proven otherwise with evidence.
A right to be able to communicate privately doesn't make Plain Old Telephone calls not be easily traced, or make the police useless.
How about this example, to clarify the issue:
However pedophiles (or terrorists) get their content, be it a darknet site or the sneakernet, under the 5th amendment a person can refuse to give a password to decrypt harddrives with potential illegal content that could incriminate them in a crime.
Following your logic, should we not rescind the 5th amendment, so that people have to prove they don't have exploitative images of children?
> presumed innocence until proven otherwise with evidence.
That's exactly the problem. Lawful surveillance is one of the most fundamental means of gathering evidence. If you take away that, then in a lot of cases you take away the ability to prove guilt.
You offer no support for the claim that police would be useful in a world where all telecommunications are impenetrably encrypted with no means for lawful intercept. If "Plain Old Telephone calls" are the only interceptable means of communication by police, then you might as well rename them the "Plain Old Police", since they would be largely ineffective.
I have not argued for rescinding any rights whatsoever. It is you, I would argue, who is arguing for rescinding the police, which are an essential part of a lawful society.
The flaw in your reasoning is that while individuals are protected from self-incrimination, no such right extends to third parties. Nor should it. The 5th amendment does make it harder for police to prosecute people, but with the power to compel other people to testify, to have service providers turn over records and surveil with proper judicial oversight, and so forth, it has been judged over the centuries to be a fair balance of powers.
To block all police power to surveil under any circumstances would substantially cripple their ability to gather evidence.
And so the question remains: If you feel lawful intercept of communications is never justified, how would one go about gathering evidence of a largely communications-based crime such as child pornography or plotting a murder?
Yes, in this case, it was the Lavabit service. But tools to allow for private communication already exist, and in those cases, the 5th amendment protects the parties involved, with no service provider able to provide the police useful data. The more the government abuses its surveillance abilities with massive collections, the more pressure will exist for criminal enterprises to turn their attention to the likes of Freenet, that are inherently difficult to surveil, even when working with the physical ISPs.
So, you ask, how do police investigations compensate when the criminals they're after increasingly use anonymous, private, secure, distribute means of communication?
Aside from the standard drug detection at borders or traffic stops, money tracking, physical surveillance, informants, undercover work, district attorneys giving deals to catch bigger bad guys, or other, you know, physical police work that doesn't include being told who, when and where the deal is going to take place, I'm not sure how Police will be able to function.
A right to be able to communicate privately doesn't make Plain Old Telephone calls not be easily traced, or make the police useless.
How about this example, to clarify the issue:
However pedophiles (or terrorists) get their content, be it a darknet site or the sneakernet, under the 5th amendment a person can refuse to give a password to decrypt harddrives with potential illegal content that could incriminate them in a crime.
Following your logic, should we not rescind the 5th amendment, so that people have to prove they don't have exploitative images of children?