> There was a brief period of time, from 1990 to 8:40 AM, September 11th, 2001, when you could do all sorts of stuff online, and the powers that be either didn't, or couldn't, monitor it.

The belief that September 11 brought in the dark times overlooks the actual history of things. The European Parliament’s ECHELON report, which detailed American massive interception and storage of internet and other electronics communications, was released in 2000. John Young’s website Cryptome was discussing the same stuff pre-9/11 that you found from people like Bruce Schneier afterwards. The revelations may not have been as big in the news like Snowden later, but it was well known that the NSA had rolled out extensive surveillance already by the turn of the millennium.