Software code DOES get subpoenaed all the time in disputes. This doesn't even have to be criminal cases, in civil cases as well. If the code resides in a version control system of some sort they typically get all of that as well. (Some smart guys have tried to deliver code in printed form to bury the other party but the courts have mostly refused those 'smart' tactics.
Email gets subpoenaed all the time as well. Again bot in civil and criminal cases. Also from outside vendors. This is not a big issue. A company gets a subpoena from a judge and they hand over the data. What is troubling with surveillance in the US is that it is happening on a massive scale without judicial oversight.
Your latest paragraph is moot. Once served with a subpoena those materials HAVE to be turned over. It doesn't matter where the data resides. If people can see it and manipulate it it can be turned over.

I wrote that, but wasn't logged in...

Seriously, you know people are going to be all over this and root with some version of some alternate OS. Either android or one of the tablet Linuxes.

Not really. While expensive, There is a reason Mr. Musk think we can hit his price point: By bringing down battery price by building his own largest battery fab in the world.

Tesla can switch a battery pack in minutes. (One of their business plans for the future is franchise stations where one would exchange batteries in minutes, the way one now gets gas). Except for crashes a car like the Tesla S has almost NO wear and tear compared to an internal combustion car. No gearbox, no oil, no injection systems no exhaust systems no cooling systems... The Tesla S's maintenance manual consist of such things as changing your wiper blades once a year etc...

As far as the pollution form the battery pack goes: While older battery technologies were stuffed with heavy metals, That is not the case with Li-Ion batteries. They are remarkably recyclable once used up.

I am typically the first guy to do an implementation. After that a bunch of guys come in and they refactor the code.
I pass all acceptance tests. (Typically a cucumber suite). The people I work with know this.
When I am contracting time is money. I don't refactor unless you pay me.
I can refactor that code as well as anybody, but by that time I'm typically called away on another project.
(My last assignment was writing a REST API while in Vietnam 5 subcontractors were writing a mobile app against my API on a nightly basis. That was a major pITA since they were 12 hours ahead of me. I prefer working against the West coast, three hours ahead is pretty much ideal.)

Now after I'm done In typically think of a much more elegant way of doing things, but by that time I'm usually on something else.
One thing: My hastily written code is nicer today than my refactored code was 5 years ago. So I guess I am improving.

People that hire me typically couldn't care less about what tools I use, or how elegant my code is.(Unless you work for a software company; I deal with a lot of businesses in totally different fields that need an issue solved, and need it done quickly.)

"Innocent until proven guilty, remember?"
Uh NO! in immigration cases, like in tax law, the burden of proof is reversed.

Ever seen the Django framework documentation? Best I've ever used. (Also really nice source code so you can step through that when dealing with obscure issues. I can't do that with Cold Fusion ('shudder'))

>Yeah, fuck the fascist USA with their terror squads,
We have those, they're called special forces and they will kill people in autonomic countries without permission of the government of said countries. We don't deny this, we're proud of them.

>secret death camps for civilians,
The US has acknowledged innocent civilians being held in Guantanamo. Even though we know they are innocent, various legal and political issues keep us from releasing them. People do die and commit suicide in that hellhole.

>mass murders of citizens and what-not.
We lost about 3,000 people on 9-11, Since then we've lost about 3 times as many US military lives and 30 times as many permanently injured. A high price to pay for the US. Since we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan between 300,000 and 1,5 million citizens in those countries have lost their lives due to military type conflict.

>Fucking come on.
I'm fucking coming into your ass right now...

Use your specs to write your acceptance tests and your acceptance tests to write your specs. There are plenty of tools available. We use cucumber.
Cucumber comes with a very English-like language (Gherkin) that can easily be converted to actual tests. We pay our contractors only when all tests pass.
No confusion: The actual spec is also the acceptance test.
Our 'user stories' in Gherkin get written by business analysts, not programmers.

A HUGE amount of back end processing systems are Unix based. Because in the olden days, Biig Metal or Unix-type systems were the only ones that could handle large data processing reliably. (That is still the case: I have had Unix servers with up to a decade of up-time.)
In the mid nineties MS went after the back-end processing market of businesses. While they had some success (And some spectacular failures) what prevented MS from gaining major foothold in enterprise data centers was the implosion of the Internet bubble and the availability of reliable, easy to use Open Source versions of Unix.
I have been writing all enterprise based applications for the past ten years as web based apps. Our current mobile stuff is also Web based (with a thin webkit client to handle the presentation on the specific device). While MS does have an installed corporate base, I'm not buying any stock soon. Their only successful product in the last decade has been the X-Box.

Web professional here. We hand code everything. A design tool might be fine for a one-off (IF you can get everything to look right in the tool!), but it doesn't allow the same control hand coding does. HOWEVER the main thing is one of maintenance. ANY web site that is the least bit popular will go through changes. This is much easier in a human written piece of pain html.

Hand written pages are lighter (IE: Smaller. That matters on a busy website).
Hand written pages can be written to be fully www3c compliant; I have yet to see a tool that can do that.
Also a lot of web frameworks use some type of templating system. Those are written manually.

I don't know where you live; but tell your son to pick up a programming language and a web framework. Two good ones are Ruby on Rails and Python with django.
Here in Atlanta they are dying for decent Ruby developers! Even if he is in high school or college, picking up coding at $50/hour beats working at McD's for $8.50...

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/10/five-steps-to-future-hardware-happiness.html

the android SDK deal with this very well. Quote:"To make life easier every API includes a FEATURE_* constant. To control your app’s availability on the Android Market, you specify the features required for your app to work. I’d like to encourage you to add manifest Feature nodes for every API you use, specifying them as optional, or not, as appropriate using a manifest uses-feature nodes as shown below:"

I don't know a single other evolving platform that deals as well with these issues as android.