It needs to be done on both fronts.

Privacy-conscious apps and communications tools need to be developed, and we need to build the consensus that privacy is important.

Sure, but then they need to send a physical person, which is expensive and impossible to scale. Making it extremely expensive is probably good enough.

(Feels like we have this same discussion over and over on HN.)

I don't understand this take. There is no real way in which a private person can make law enforcement "more expensive". The government can always find means as long as it is supported by a sufficiently big fraction of its people.

1 person using encryption vs 1 million people using encryption.

Sure, they won't go out and arrest all one million, but from an individual perspective it's basically security by obscurity.

Once that's the case, otherwise legal activities (e.g. protesting, or making political statements) run the risk of making you a target. Law enforcement can then punish you for your legal activity by selectively enforcing this other law.

The resulting situation is one where everyone knows to some extent "you better shut up if you know what's good for you", and puts a chilling effect on otherwise legal forms of civic engagement.

You might point out that there are already laws on the books that let them do this, but I'm sure they wouldn't mind another.