The answer seems straight forward. The term "authorities" comes with the assumption that they're the ones "leading". We've been taught for most of our lives the person up-front (parent, teacher, president) is always right and the vast majority of people won't question that.
I'll trust techies the day they actually are in the job of protecting people and have to deal with real danger of bad actors continuously trying to blow up Western democracies.
It's funny the tech/security/sysadmin guys complain that their work is appreciated only when things go wrong, but fail to give the same benefit of the doubt for US law and order.
Myron W. Orfield, Jr., Deterrence, Perjury, and the Heater Factor, supra note 13, at 83:
> Respondents, including prosecutors, estimate that police commit perjury between 20% and 50% of the time they testify on Fourth Amendment issues.
It should also be noted that many of these respondents did not consider lying at a suppression hearing perjury, infra text accompanying note 47, which would have the effect of deflating these percentages.
The FBI sat on incriminating info about Epstein for years and even still has yet to raid his New Mexico ranch for evidence. Given that he had damaging info on many people with their hands directly on the levers of power in "Western democracies" you'll have to excuse my skepticism that these agencies are acting in the interest of their common people.
Same with the clipper chip. Same with TPM/DRM/ME. Same with Internet centralization.
It's worth asking why the general public keeps trusting authorities and distrusts techies, even those among us with a career in security.