No we have not. We thought we did, but authorities knew better. Remember the cipherpunk crackdown, the crypto wars, NSA tampering with standards etc. They were watching us quietly enough.
The real "freedom" existed for a very tiny period between email/news/irc existing and them registering on The Man's radar, which happened fairly quickly (and no thanks to pop media like War Games for popularizing the idea of hordes of teenagers intent on vandalizing essential network infrastructure). The standards developed to respond (PGP, SSL etc) took 15 years to actually get traction (and I bet you're still not using PGP), and as soon as they hit the mainstream, they were attacked and subverted from inside the organizations trying to implement them on a large scale.
The freedom we thought we had was a myth. I think this is an important concept to keep in mind, going in this inevitable political negotiation with authorities. They lied when they told us we were free, and they will lie when they'll tell us that "golden" keys will only be used for good. Like you don't talk to the police without a lawyer, you shouldn't hand your encryption to them without a Schneier in the room.
This is the money quote for me. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get this through to people: No, I'm not a criminal now. I don't plan to become a criminal in the future. I control my own actions, but I don't control the how my actions are perceived by other people.
Should I be arrested because some combination of my purchases today and words written when I was 17 point to me committing a terrorist act? More to the point, should I have to worry about what someone is going to think if a computer flags my metadata as "worth investigation" and they start trawling through the entirety of my online life? What effect does that have on general conversation on the internet?
I think the thing I'm most afraid of is how do I explain this to my kids? In 10 years when they start forging their own life online, how do I sit down and explain that everything they do is monitored, and they need to be careful about everything they say and do on the internet? How do I explain that it didn't used to be like that, but we failed to stop it? It sounds melodramatic to type it out, but we've had an unprecedented amount of freedom to communicate with people around the world, and now that's being taken away.