I think that's a great idea. I for one want to enable our governments to track down criminals and punish them for it. If they're not doing everything they can do so in this technological and digital age, then they are breaking their part of that pesky "social contract" I am being upheld to.
And to people like you that oppose this and propose even more authoritarian laws that prevent me as a citizen from protecting myself: You don't speak for all of us.
You speak as if there is a perfect equivalence between morality and law, and that every action that can be done to increase the rate at which crimes are solved is a good thing. I think that is a bit simplistic and naive.
My comment may come off that way, but I don't think there is a perfect equivalence, no. And if anything, every person has a different set of morality.
I come from a point of practicality and lack of chaos. It's bad enough that we all have different morality, but we have somehow through some semi-shared and semi-agreed process come up with a set of laws that we should all subscribe and be held-to. And on top of that, we have individuals that want to add more chaos to the mix by having us gimp and restrict the government from enforcing the laws we have already agreed to (for better or worse). They don't get to have that right anymore than I have the right to break any other arbitrary law, and I am tired of privacy advocates claiming some objective moral high ground and "universal" principle of privacy that they claim we all share or want.
I strongly believe that a little bit of chaos is necessary to actually make progress in civil liberty. Being able to detect any and all crime is indistinguishable from an authoritarian regime.
There are many laws today which are unjust, and which I think it is morally fine to break even though you put yourself at risk of being prosecuted. There have also been many laws in the recent past which have been repealed, and which we today will say were unjust. For example, prohibition against being homosexual was a thing in many western democracies up until just a few decades ago. Imagine if that was still illegal and we had this level of surveillance?
I also think that drug laws is a good example of unjust prohibition. I do not think all drugs should be available on a commercial market, but I think that we should have regulated sales so people can choose what they want to put in their own bodies. While I of course don't condone of the violence associated with it, I think the current situation of drugs being available on hidden dark markets to motivated buyers is a necessary evil to allow people to exercise their right to bodily autonomy in an unjust legal framework.
There has to be fudge factor for a democracy to actually make progress, or else I fear that we end up in some status quo where anyone who wants to open their mouth and protest a law will be afraid to do so because they don't know what dirt the state has collected on them.
Do you see any drawbacks with giving our authorities total information about you me and everybody else?
Perhaps potential for misuse?
Because as I understand the world, the people who hold the most power are generally not the best people.
Indeed. The more powerful tools there are available, the worse kind of people get drawn to them. And the more it corrupts those with initially good intentions.
People seem to be longing for a God of sorts in their aspirations towards authoritarian governments (naively believing that those with the power will be (and remain) benevolent and act in their best interests and with fairness).
What do you plan to do when definitions of crime start getting fuzzy? Crime is not just petty crimes where it's a clear cut to tell if someone did something bad in definitive terms.
Other crime types exist that are crime only within a structure. The crime of sharing copyrighted files is a crime within a framework of intellectual rights but then training AI on the same files and and producing alternative files bypassing the IP is not a crime. Then you get into political crimes, i.e. it can be a crime to deny the Armenian genocide, denying the Jewish genicide and protesting against the extermination of the Palestinians at this very moment. It can be crime to hide from the US embassy that you are not completely in support of extermination of Gaza people. Your government might cut a deal to save Greenland from US invasion that makes certain things a crime that the current US administration doesn't like.
This all can change as politics evolves. Do you intend to support whatever the current position the current government has?
Crime has ALWAYS been political in nature.
I steal $100 from the cash register. Cameras are pulled, and I'm arrested and charged criminally.
Company edits timecards and steals $100 from me. Its instead a civil matter, and maybe I might get paid back. Then again, probably not.
Person shoots and kills a home invader. Murder trial ensues, and they spend piles of money to defend themselves.
Cops shoot and kill person (likely black). They get away with it with 2 week suspended-with-pay because 'I thought I saw a weapon'.
Insider stock trading is illegal, unless you're congress. Then completely legal.
Highway patrols (read: state sanctioned gangs) confiscate cash for no reason. You have to sue the cash and prove good intent. You usually lose.
Illegal immigration: ICE goes to places including workplaces and arrests (in various legal issues) illegal immigrants for illegally holding a job. None of the managers or owners are ever charged with immigration fraud, identity theft, or similar laws.
There are 2 types of laws in our system: for those in power, and for those who don't have power.