It's a petition. It's primary function is to serve as a list of names. Your concern is that it might later be used for retaliation, which has always been true throughout the history of man.
The solution is to ensure that the government cannot retaliate against it's own citizens with impunity.
Oh yeah and no human will even know it happened, the dragnet is pre-indexing everything in the event they need to get a warrant later… never should have been allowed, government should not get a copy of my papers and effects in advance so that they can search them later as needed! I bet they even have an ongoing automated decryption queue always running and growing in size.
> I bet they even have an ongoing automated decryption queue always running and growing in size.
Maybe, but it's likely very specific in its targets because the decryption is so expensive.
If they have no reason to decrypt Bob's files today, they can shelve them for a later date when they have a reason and decryption is cheaper -- or a vulnerability has been discovered in the algorithm.
that's the state of things.