In terms of political power, programmers are more like yeomen than peasants. Yeomen have power due to their essential skills because if a good fraction of them stopped working the system would collapse. (Whereas if peasants stop working, they just starve.) If a sufficient number of programmers said "We're not going to implement or support privacy-invading systems" the government would have to back down.

Sadly, your faith is entirely quixotic. Like all other segments of society, there’s always a cohort willing to do anything - regardless of ethics, legality or morality. They are entirely nihilistic, not giving a shit about anything or anyone. And it only takes a small number of such people to do great harm.