I was reading about recent improvements in voice to text technology and the Government's ongoing goal to broadly track conversations from YouTube, government placed cameras, and other audio sources.
It occurred to me that there is a parallel with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle here. You might remember Heisenberg and his finding that you can't study something without changing it. He was speaking of quantum theory and atomic particles. The smaller the wavelength of light, the more energy it contains. To measure a subatomic particle you need a tiny wavelength with a corresponding powerful blast of energy that drastically affects the subject being studied. This finding has had philosophic implications from the start. Hawking cites the Uncertainty Principle when saying it is impossible for us to know the state of the Universe before the big bang, to know the conditions that precipitated it, or what higher power may have had a hand in its formation. This principle has also been used to show the logical shortcomings of our intelligence. Even with unlimited resources we can't know the state of the Universe, nor calculate its next steps.
A tool powerful enough to study every small conversation is not innocuous. The ray of observation affects us all, and it is impossible to say what results may come. It does not seem that outlandish to expect that many branches of communication will be affected and that ordinary people will change their habits and approach to securing communication. Quantum mechanics teaches us of the inherent difficulty in tracking complex systems, perhaps we should take that lesson to heart. 