Asides from Sandy's points, there are several corrections that you need to be aware of.
1.) Sandy didn't say "NO crime," he said "LESS crime." While the philosophy behind that is debatable, it does not detract from the story and does not "hand wave" the fact that the brothers are currently victims of crime or criminal intent.
2.) It's not just "USA centric" to carry some kind of arms for self defense. Anywhere that police forces are either non-existent, far away, or unreliable people carry arms to defend themselves, even if it's "criminal" to do so.
3.) People, in general, don't like to complicate their lives more than absolutely necessary. Encryption software or hardware can and does fail. If the brothers did not feel the need to encrypt their coms, they would not do so, seeing as speaking to each other in static or gibberish would, at best, be seriously counter-productive. Not to mention that scrambler gear adds significant costs to their actions, both in the initial investment, and in continuing operating costs, fuel, oxygen, etc. Also, aside from the quasi-magical "tanglenet," it seems in the futuristic world of EFT, all forms of encryption can or already have been cracked.
(I'm quite curious how the brothers would connect to tanglenet without using radio which can be triangulated. Is it some kind of rapidly, randomly changing "cell" structure where the signals are routed through nearby satellites of some kind?)
4.) Sandy IS making a "serious effort" to portray the world of the future. The fact that he doesn't always succeed (at least in YOUR eyes) does not negate the fact that he IS trying. We also await your submissions to Big Head Press with baited breath.
5.) If Sandy's praise was all through private messages, I can see how you would think that Sandy "cheats" or is just "determined that no 'mere' reader outguess [him];" however, if you had actually been paying attention to the forums, you'd note that Sandy actually praises people who successfully predict plot elements or actually read and PAY ATTENTION to the comic. He also does a real good job of keeping people guessing if their predictions are true or not until the plot actually comes to pass. There are many comics that I could mention where the author DOES change the comic in response to the forums just to prove certain posters right or wrong and then turn around and claim that "the forum had such good material.." This is not one of those comics.