I think there's a strong distinction between "the government can read everything unencrypted" and "the government has a horde of vulnerability researchers, and routinely infects huge numbers of computers with their code". For the sake of discussion, I will concede that the former was well-known. The latter, IMO, wasn't.

What more could people have done? Good question. Maybe try and contact investigative journalists, although I have had no luck doing that for an unrelated issue I feel strongly about (NBA game fixing).