> What you have in those servers are the criminals' tools. The FBI went there to remove the tools, not the criminals.

It was a reverse shell, they removed shell access that the criminals could use to do whatever they want on the affected servers. Yes, no one is actually inside of the servers that they are working on, but if you have a shell inside of a given server and are connected to it, I would consider you inside that server.

> So sure, if the Police sees a criminal in my house about to shoot me, walk right in, please. But I don't want them sneaking in without my explicit consent or a warrant to remove a gun left under my couch by a criminal.

Right, they did indeed have a signed warrant to perform these actions before they performed them.

> can easily turn the exact arguments you're using into supporting backdooring encryption.

To me, this and similar stuff like backdoor encryption are incredibly hard to solve because both sides of the argument make valid points. The law enforcement community are not all dumb luddites grasping for power for their own sinister means. They fight legitimate monsters and a lot of them only care about fighting those monsters. At the same time, the opposing argument that adding back doors and other similar things are extremely detrimental to security for the population at large. It is a trade off with no compromise that is acceptable to both parties at the same time.

> This being said you're misconstruing the situation to make the "but terrorists" and "think of the children" argument.

We live in a world with bad nation state actors, why exactly is it wrong to make the argument that there are bad actors that do bad things to a small minority of the population and that fighting those things is good? I don't think anyone would say that those bad nation state actors do not exist and are not doing bad things to companies in the United States. The intellectual thievery against companies in the United States is real and it has happened numerous times and is not some conspiracy theory peddled by law enforcement so that they can grab more power.

> Or pretty much any "proactive" move that will "stop the Chinese". No amount of rationalizing will change the fact that you shouldn't force these "favors" on anyone. Pass a law that mandates something to the same effect to be implemented by the owners themselves, or by the vendor, once informed of the risk, under the threat of penalties if they don't.

What exactly was wrong with the actions taken by the FBI that you so vehemently oppose? Do you really think that there was a single one the affected companies that would have rather left the reverse shells in place just because someone in the FBI running a script against their server to remove that shell would make them uncomfortable? The FBI are not legislators, they cannot pass laws to prompt companies to clean up those reverse shells. I highly doubt that their actions had sinister motives and the most likely occam's razer solution is that they were just trying to do a good thing for their country.

Sure, there could be a world where our laws are on the libertarian end of the spectrum where law enforcement officers don't come near the line that makes people uncomfortable. However, that route will have numerous trade offs that a lot of society will not like. Law enforcement has to tread a fine line where they prohibit bad actors from doing bad things so that society can live and prosper while at the same time not doing stasi-like stuff that will suffocate and control society. This issue and others like it are not black and white, both sides have valid points and tipping completely to either end of the spectrum completely doesn't seem like the best route. Their actions in this case don't seem too stasi-like to me.