We can't blame power for establishing systems of control, just as we can't blame a tiger for mauling a zoo keeper: it's the nature of the thing. It's what we should expect, no matter how much time we spend coaxing or training it.
I'd much rather invest energy into developing solutions that allow us to communicate securely, rather than investing energy into asking those with power not to monitor our insecure communication.
We are so far off the reservation that we have given up on trying to reclaim our government and instead, must now find ways to protect ourselves from our government.
That's a powerful statement about the plight of our nation.
The fact that we have 300 million citizens and majority will cannot be expressed is exactly a symptom of this condition. The government is no longer the people, but a separate entity with its own agendas. Agendas which frequently run counter to the interests of the people.
No it's not, it's a system of human beings. Systems make "decisions" quite differently than individuals do. In some cases they have what we might consider far superior reasoning ability compared to the individual, but in others they're even more limited than the tiger.
Legal or otherwise, I'd rather not have money deducted from my paycheck and spent on data centers to store all of my phone calls and email.
Now, today the prevailing view is that the 4th amendment is that illegal searches are unconstitutional even if the exclusionary rule can't be invoked (see, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named FBI Agents), but there is still this contour in the law that distinguishes collecting data from trying to bring it into evidence.
The argument here is probably wrong, but not ridiculous.