No, it just means whatever data they have is less secure. Encryption does nothing about data collection.

Well encrypted data is practically useless to the collector. They could just as well be a random noise. Metadata may be worth something, but not nearly as much.

The solution there is political, not technical.

The political solution is way too fragile.

This is a silly distinction, if they have just as much data but it's encrypted and they can't use it, most people would call that less data.

I am as much anti sureveillance as you get. There is abdifference so between end-to-end encryption of communications (all for it) and collecting user data (all against it). Usually I hate semantics, because most of the time people use it to nitpick on deffinitiom ignoring what people understand using a word, but here the differwnce between the two things is a) technical reality and b) relevant for topic at hand.

Hmmm. I wonder if the GDPR could be leveraged against the EU in this case?