For contrast, you can imagine how this debate between a private OS developer and the government would go in a non-democratic country. Or, you don't even have to imagine, because examples are not hard to find.

> debate

> non-democratic country

My guess is there will be no debate... That said, we must acknowledge even having this debate is a positive step.

A threat is not a debate.

But really, the point GP was trying to make (IMO) is that all western democracies are very obviously sliding towards authoritarianism. They are building tools which, even _if_ they don't abuse them now, will be available to any future government and with time, the probability of one of them being non-democratic is 1.