I dont really care for telephone companies as heads would roll if they would dare to intercept my phone calls without court order. We had one case just 2 weeks back where one of mobile phone/internet installed some security "firewall" that was doing mitm on https, they are now under investigation and under consideration of criminal persecution. They had system in place for less then 1 week. I am protected regarding those by laws.
So to answer your question, telephone companies are a failure in USA (wild west and lawlessness), in my country they need to obey laws. Corporations doesnt obey any laws outside their country (which they select based on inneficient laws) and need to be harshly regulated.
My personally favorite would be legislation that would mandate e2e encryption that must not be backdoored by anyone else except law enforcement getting warrent but private keys are staying under judge supervision without possibility to give it away (in pkcs#12 manner) and can be only used to decrypt communication when he presses the big red button. Quite frankly you want to be able to wiretap organized crime.
So open source solutions should be banned? I should not be allowed to use or create a program that allows me to talk with e2e encryption? Finding someone in possession of undisclosed keys should be a crime?
Care to see what happens then? Check China. They are implementing this very thing. For the children, I suppose.
Those are not simple debates and you are just taking them as black and white and then offer one solution (e2e) and making huge issues on the other side (organized crime, corrupted politians (If I understand you correctly, you are most worried about them - China?). The "think of the children" and "terrorists" are the least problematic topics here).
The judge only access prevents mass data gathering of law enforcement agencies and three letter agencies (at least in my country). And enable control of further institutions. Secret and hidden backdoors (Crypto AG, Dual_EC_DRBG,...) or corporations bribed by government deals are the worse solution here as it doesnt prevent the access to the data to either corporations or secred agencies while it might hold away law enforcement or also not. And surely enables mass data gathering from all without any supervision or control. What the real issue here is that no one is mentioning any court orders. Everyone would just want to have access to everything. Now THAT IS an issue.
I was talking about legal entities operating in same manner as telcos were. Also in real world you can invent your own one time pad encoded speaking and no one will understand you even if they wiretap the communication. And actually mafia historically has been using slang to cover up the communication. Same as you can do it in open source.
Anyway, do you communicate over the "secret encryted communication channel" covered with rag, to prevent recording your lips, recording with laser measuring shaking of window glass, you face muscles, IR recording and probably next 100 methods I am not even aware of. As this are the issue you also have with warrant being issued. Guess not. So the police looks like is not an issue for you (or warrant).
Then the three letter agencies, except for "warrant" methods they will use rubber hose cryptography to break you and any of your e2e communication and actually you might wish they would be able to read from your communication without contacting you in person. So e2e doesnt change anything for you here either.
I refuse to handle open source solutions that you install on your server to use them in same manner as corporation entities that use their solutions to wiretap the communications of everyone so they can earn more money from informations they gather.
And I also think that "encrypted Apple" phones (and everyone else doing any business with government) and the whole FBI story is just a sharade to bait people that are hiding something in ecosystem where the can simply access the information by agencies that CAN issue gag order. The whole story surely looks like counter-espionage operation from 1970. Time will tell if I am right.
It's not black and white. And I am not offering e2e as THE solution to privacy and freedom, but as a part of it and an important metric of whether a solution is actually working right. Just because encryption does not protect me from EVERYTHING, like physical surveillance, that does not mean we should abandon it - THAT is black and white thinking.
Having the law being able to access encrypted communications at any time will trample at the examples I brought up, which are examples that came up with zero effort, no matter what you try to put into your proposed solution - if the goal is to prevent crime, and there are available solutions out there that allow for e2e communication, the goal does not stand. You can't have a corporation banned from e2e, but allow any random dude spin up a secure communication platform without any keys compromised - what are you even banning then.
It amazes me that "corrupt politicians" is shrugged off just like that, while corrupt officials of any kind is exactly what everyone need defenses against with ANY means. In China, they are in the process of legislating exactly what you propose - no private encryption key to be withheld from the law, and yes, you did not misunderstand, it's at the scale this implies, total control and ability to observe over all traffic and restive data at any time - even forgetting all that is happening now, that leaves little unattended by law there.
Now, what, China is a "bad example"? An "exception"? I'd say this attitude coming from governments is the norm around most the world. Where people are at real risk from what say say over the net.
Out of all such countries, let's take China. Do you believe China should reverse its course and allow encrypted communication for its citizens? Based on your words and thoughts, I say you would answer "no". It's doing exactly what you propose after all - now, the only tiny step to totally suit your proposal is to use their powers for "good"! Right? And they indeed using it for good, according to their own legislation.
Because, if you nonetheless said "yes, China should allow e2e in favour of its citizen's rights", you would in essence be saying that "Freedom loving Western countries" should give the law total access to any information (they will always do it only when needed, of course!), but the same countries should pressure "totalitarian regiments" to maintain their citizens rights including encryption. That's contradictory, at least by thinking about it only for a bit.
There's a correlation between these things. Any power given is sure to be abused. If that is not prevented and pushed back, it will not stop but worsen. Trying to find a formula to give absolute power and restrict it at the same time is just fooling around, it's the core assumptions that matter. Unless you really think that some governments are somehow immune to becoming corrupt ant totalitarian when meeting no resistance - their people must be saints indeed! - in which case, I am sorry to say, but I can only chuckle.
Read what my proposal was and stop beating the strawman (i wont attribute this to malice as you clearly havent read any of it).
With my proposal law enforcement can access to the unencrypted data far less that they can do it now (under the rag) and when they access they are under scrutiny of judges while it prevents corporations accessing it.
Maybe do take time to think about what country is, what government is and to who it serves, what corporation is and to who it serve, maybe ask yourself what the law enforcement is and who does it serve, if you dare go into further, what if there would be no law enforcement? Do you have the muscless for that?
Or chuckle mindlessly on. I think your whole statement is demanding advantages in system where someone else takes care for you to allow you to not think about dissadvantages.
So to answer your question, telephone companies are a failure in USA (wild west and lawlessness), in my country they need to obey laws. Corporations doesnt obey any laws outside their country (which they select based on inneficient laws) and need to be harshly regulated.
My personally favorite would be legislation that would mandate e2e encryption that must not be backdoored by anyone else except law enforcement getting warrent but private keys are staying under judge supervision without possibility to give it away (in pkcs#12 manner) and can be only used to decrypt communication when he presses the big red button. Quite frankly you want to be able to wiretap organized crime.