There has never, in my life, been a time that the government and the people they work for/represent/are have ever been more adversarial. When you realize government has stopped working for you and are actively treating you like a criminal, you ask who they are working for. It's hard not to land on banks, corporations, and Bernie's "Billionaire Class" - whether that's true or not isn't part of my point.

So it's hard to "trust" in a single direction when the actions that cause distrust are so, so bald-faced. Every conspiracy-sounding theory surrounding surveillance has turned out to be true. And all that worry about being caught has had a net-zero effect. Maybe Let's Encrypt was at least partially a result, but that's about it. So why worry now? Turns out secret courts are just about guaranteed to green-light whatever the hell the NSA wants, so people finding out didn't really turn out as badly as they were worried about.

So "trust us" is about impossible anymore. I don't know if the relationship can be healed, to be honest. Obama was the ideal of our best shot, but that ship sailed like, day 2.

I didn't say "trust government", I said "trust people". Do you trust your neighbours? Do you attend meetings or organizations with like-minded people? The surveillance state is most powerful when everybody sits at home afraid to go out. If you get out in public and organize with people and talk about these issues, you'll find strength and courage in your neighbours.

The #1 goal of the Neoliberal elite class is to crush the will of people like you. If you've already given up then you might as well be dead to them; they don't even need to spy on you at that point! If, on the other hand, you're out in public and organizing in large numbers then what can they do? You can force them to engage with the issues on your terms.

I'd like every person to attend a few public council meetings per year. In person. So much criticism about The System is so wide of the mark, its not even wrong.

If people are upset, enough to effect change, they only have to start showing up. Find the game, learn the game, play the game.

You must not have been alive long. There was a time people in the States were being jailed and having their rights rescinded for possibly, maybe, being communists.

Trust isn't a binary thing. I trust different people; different organisations, with different data, information and details about my life and other peoples lives.

"Frustratingly slow" as in "not happening at all, and in fact getting steadily worse"? I'll take the gamble of a technological solution which might actually work over the certainty of a political solution which will happily consume more time and energy than I can afford to waste on it without showing any results whatsoever.

You need both.

Technology alone cannot solve political problems. The technology can be banned.

Technology can, however, raise the difficulty for sub-components of a government that are wanting to push the limits and do things outside the boundaries of the politically agreed upon systems. Encryption can't stop the NSA if it has widespread political support because the encryption can be banned. But right now intelligence agencies are absolutely hurting, because what they're doing is highly controversial and blocking them with encryption is not at illegal. If the political debate is won, even if it's just a partial win, then they're forced back inside their box for a long time to come.

Governments can ban anything they like but the ban doesn't mean much if they cannot feasibly enforce it. Such is the lesson of the War on Drugs: the government comes in and makes trouble for people from time to time, but otherwise they simply haven't got a clue, and for the most part people just live their lives as they please and ignore the laws they don't agree with.

I'm glad there are people fighting the political fights too, though I can't imagine where they get the patience. I certainly have nothing to offer in that arena.

I take your point about the NSA, but it doesn't appear that political action will stop them either, because they are happy to ignore political constraints (and lie to Congress about it, for example) and simply do whatever their technological capabilities allow them to.

Yes, but that's why strong encryption is such a strong force to stop them. They operate outside the political sphere at the moment. It's questionable how long that can last.

A war on encryption would be much easier to enforce than a war on drugs because there are such fewer sources, and there's not a big market for its use.