First, a single political defeat is not the end-all-be-all here. Politics may move slowly, but it does move (e.g. the political status of a black lesbian is undoubtedly better today than it was 50 years ago).
Second, technology and political are not an either/or proposition (or even a primary/secondary proposition). IMHO, it's something like: Privacy = Technology * Politics. Simply stressing one will give you (relative) diminishing returns if you don't push the other as well.
Good encryption can make it difficult for the NSA to conduct widespread online surveillance, but given (a) the difficulty of getting crypto right, (b) the sheer number of organizations with the ability to (intentionally or unintentionally) compromise security for a large number of users, and (c) the relatively low impact privacy and security have on purchasing decisions for many (if not most) people, it's something like the size of the NSA's budget (a political question) that will ultimately determine whether mass surveillance is prohibitively expensive or merely inconvenient.
I just wanted to chime in and say that I had always avoided infosec as "too hard" (I'm primarily a UI guy), but the Snowden leaks have made me a lot more conscious of my digital footprint and security in general. I even spent several months on khan academy learning the requisite maths to understand the stanford crypto 101 class on coursera (awesome course by the way!). Of course I'm far from journeyman status but I believe there are many more like me whose awareness of the issue was significantly raised by the leaks. Even if no political changes come about as a result, that's a huge aggregate effect that will only increase over the next years/decades.
I think it's a bit odd so many hackers view technology as even a possibility to their saving grace in this struggle. Were hackers the ones largely supporting actionable development efforts of Tor? Do they continue to? How many people do you know that use Tor for casual internet browsing vs spending more time on Facebook?
Take a look at your paycheck, expenses, taxes, and then contributions to technological solutions by-the-people, for-the-people. How many of you work at $job doing data-analysis for marketing schemes verses something useful to society. After all of that, then do some rough statistics on programmers that contribute to meaningful projects regarding cryptography (properly implemented, not talking about crap like 'secret') and freenet-type ideas. How many of us are going to quit our jobs to focus on this problem, how many of us could if we wanted to. Stop kidding yourselves, we're all literally paying for the work of evil-doers to subvert long extinguished ideas of privacy. Either adapt to survive or resist in a meaningful way, stop diluting yourselves with ideas of grandeur.
Tech people are nothing more than glorified marketers by-and-large. We handed the reigns of technology to those with capital, and the results are sickening. RMS was and will always be correct. The rest of you live in a vacuum fortified by paychecks and social support.
The captue of silicon valley by madison avenue never ceases to Amaze me. That's the difference between now. Amazingly, it has nothing to do with the NSA. But the privacy landgrab really stated with all of the VC backed companies desperately trying to become profitable in a stock bubble.
> The rest of you live in a vacuum fortified by paychecks and social support.
It's all of us really. The enormous amount of money pumped into tech by the surveillance state reaches nearly every software company (and beyond). Your examples for worthwhile projects are Tor, freenet, and crypto. The surveillance state finds those projects useful too.
This problem is larger than what you're considering and blaming particular industries and spaces understates the amount of cash pumped into the world by governments.
And just because corn farmers have a subsidized crop that drives the processed food industry which give us cancer/diabetes doesn't mean those farmers shouldn't follow best practices unless we want another dust bowl. Likewise, I think it's great that UI programmers are more aware of security.
Also, we're not literally paying for the surveillance state. They're essentially stealing from the people by arbitrarily printing money which devalues our own. If taxes were raised commensurate with spending and debt, we'd certainly be making some more prudent decisions about how best to spend tax dollars.
I assure you I have no delusions of grandeur. I believe that you are underestimating the halo effect of the negative attention that sovereign and corporate spying have received in the last few years. And I don't pay taxes to the US government.
I was careful not to specify US taxes. The US may have started the awareness of this issue, but they're far from the only government involved. I've underestimated very little so far, retrospective to my predictions. However I've argued with plenty that have overestimated as history now proves.
Again, my point was looking at the overall useful contributions the average hacker can make while focusing on the struggle of maintaining 98F, verses the hiring, monetizing and actionable efforts coming from the adversary. Making progress in this day and age largely depends on accurately understanding the actual adversary. If you think that's limited to the 'US Government'... well then...
I think we all agree that progress on the technological front is important, but I disagree that you can ignore the political and cultural fronts.
Even if you have perfect encryption, if the government can demand anyone to decrypt anything at anytime (else go to jail) without due process or transparency, that's going to undermine the effectiveness of technological tools. Even modest legal protections for privacy will greatly increase the value of technological tools.
Along the same lines, what's the point of all our great tools if no one uses them? Some privacy tech is more successful than others, but why is most email sent as plain text? Technology has been around forever.
A lot can be said for increasing ease of use and so on, but until encrypted email is easier to use than unencrypted email (seems unlikely), what motivation do users have to switch if they don't value privacy? To get users to make the switch, they need to understand the value of privacy. This is a social problem, not a technological problem.
Second, technology and political are not an either/or proposition (or even a primary/secondary proposition). IMHO, it's something like: Privacy = Technology * Politics. Simply stressing one will give you (relative) diminishing returns if you don't push the other as well.
Good encryption can make it difficult for the NSA to conduct widespread online surveillance, but given (a) the difficulty of getting crypto right, (b) the sheer number of organizations with the ability to (intentionally or unintentionally) compromise security for a large number of users, and (c) the relatively low impact privacy and security have on purchasing decisions for many (if not most) people, it's something like the size of the NSA's budget (a political question) that will ultimately determine whether mass surveillance is prohibitively expensive or merely inconvenient.