I always think of Ai Weiwei when considering just what's possible under the Chinese government and system. It's nice that my property won't be demolished and that I won't be kidnapped and beaten by police just because the government doesn't like my criticisms.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Weiwei

Evan Osnos has some interesting pieces about China and Ai Weiwei:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/evan-osnos/ai-weiwei-at-home-...

Are we just ignoring the black site in Chicago?

Do you have any proof despite statements that the entire internal surveillance programs of the NSA was dismantled or we should just believe because the US government would never lie to us?

Technically, while I do think that those companies have moved to stronger encryption over the past few years (which is a general trend I think) for consumer facing stuff, at least one of the changes that came out of PRISM was that Google started encrypting all of their communications in and out of their data centers (and in between) because PRISM was tapping at the datacenter level if I recall (something related to the note with the smiley face).

Encryption doesn't prevent state actors to require a secret backdoor. Your naive point of view ignore 40 years of history of spying and power abuse. It's worrying the past is erased so easily in the people's mind. It allows terrible behavior to come back rocking again and again.

Yes and no. Google has all but abandoned the idea of end to end encryption for its users.