> The entire purpose of playpen was child pornography.
I understand your point and I accept your observation that "mass surveillance" may not be the right definition of what happened in the Playpen case.
However, I invite you to consider the following: once (and if) there is a legal precedent where law enforcement agencies are allowed to hack the users of a given website, that legal precedent will be relevant in future cases, related to other websites that are not Playpen. Today it's Playpen, tomorrow it might be a community of activists. By then, I think you will agree with me, it will be much easier to consider that proper mass surveillance. And if you were one of those activists mentioned in my example above, good luck building your defence on the fact that "this provision can't be applied to me, because it was intended for child pornography websites".
This type of process has already happened in recent history, e.g. with "security" laws that were passed after 9/11. Those laws, in several ways, limit everyone's liberties, not just those of terrorists[1][2].
Of course those provisions seemed like a damn good idea soon after 9/11. Now, not so much. Erosion of freedom, just like natural erosion, has a way of progressing very slowly but steadily.
I understand your point and I accept your observation that "mass surveillance" may not be the right definition of what happened in the Playpen case.
However, I invite you to consider the following: once (and if) there is a legal precedent where law enforcement agencies are allowed to hack the users of a given website, that legal precedent will be relevant in future cases, related to other websites that are not Playpen. Today it's Playpen, tomorrow it might be a community of activists. By then, I think you will agree with me, it will be much easier to consider that proper mass surveillance. And if you were one of those activists mentioned in my example above, good luck building your defence on the fact that "this provision can't be applied to me, because it was intended for child pornography websites".
This type of process has already happened in recent history, e.g. with "security" laws that were passed after 9/11. Those laws, in several ways, limit everyone's liberties, not just those of terrorists[1][2].
Of course those provisions seemed like a damn good idea soon after 9/11. Now, not so much. Erosion of freedom, just like natural erosion, has a way of progressing very slowly but steadily.
[1] http://www.economist.com/node/1301751
[2] http://www.economist.com/node/9833041