If running a mesh network is illegal, does it matter that the traffic is just math? Without a network, there's no data transmission of that math. The government controls the airwaves. It doesn't matter if you're broadcasting Top40 or encrypted messages, if they say no to your transmitting, you're going nowhere.
> if they say no to your transmitting, you're going nowhere.
> if they say no to your forgetting to scan the case of water on the bottom of your cart, you're going nowhere.
> if they say no to your hacked cable box, you're going nowhere.
> if they say no to your speeding, you're going nowhere.
> if they say no to your weed, you're going nowhere.
> if they say no to your growing a mushroom and mailing it to your friend, you're going nowhere.
There's a whole spectrum of how illegal something is to consider. People break the law every day for a range of reasons from accident, to ignorance, to convenience, to want, to need, etc.
In the hypothetical world that you've set out, where surveillance is so extreme and overreaching as to help finish off the entirety of the internet for good, there's no way it would stop at the internet. The goal isn't controlling this set of standards and protocols that defines just the internet, the goal is controlling communication and the internet is the #1 way of communicating between people at the moment.
If people all started talking through letter mail, you'd get Letter Control, they wouldn't just forget about it because it's not the internet. If the people somehow become smart and coordinated enough to move to some cryptographically-secure method of communication, your government will probably outlaw the equipment and actions associated with using it in the first place instead of trying to decrypt all communications.
The goal is control of information, and the way of doing that is to force everyone to use unsecured communication with no feasible alternatives. I wouldn't expect kid glove treatment with that, unlike speeding or minor shoplifting.
> to force everyone to use unsecured communication
Treat social media as any other unsecured channel. You can do e2e on Facebook, you'll just have to do it yourself. I'm only half joking, I'm sure somebody has done this already, they just keep quiet about it.
Lot of probably's and maybes moving at the speed of government in your comment, look how many decades this has been in the works.
Circumventing the Great Firewall in China is against the rules, comes with some risk for vpn operators and users, yet we know it happens regularly.
Buying and selling drugs online is illegal, yet there's always a Silk Road or Empire Market with enough buyers and sellers to make the risk worth it. We already have "letter control" for drugs, but it doesn't stop me from buying a QP of weed and a federal employee delivering it conveniently to my house.
Good luck outlawing the parts and software, maybe they'll get to them when they finally gather up all the fentanyl.
Even if chat control doesn't happen, the social internet is fucked. Just look at Quora for a preview.
running an actively transmitting network is an easy thing for them to come and shut down. you doing any of the other things can easily be done without them knowing about it. you can be flippant about it all you want, but you don't look intelligent by doing so
