And I'm saying you won't make it economically inviable to spy on people as long as the people who want to do it are in power, because they have a significant control over the economy.

I certainly hope not. If anyone with bad intentions could ultimately be expected to realize these intentions no matter what, we might indeed as well sit down and wait for the end, right?

That was my exact opposite point. Since bad people will do bad things to you anyway, you should do as much as you can before you can't for whatever reason.

I think that no access to that data would count as a victory against mass surveillance as well. How would you ever prevent data being misused once it's there? It's data.

You can't. However you can make sure that the misuse is completely trivial - like being sold to some shadier advertisers (the kind that make adware/malware) rather than to a party which has the power and can have the will to erase you.

The sad truth is that the compliance of the masses actually paints a big bull's eye on everyone who goes against the grain. Yes, they actually do target the privacy-conscious.

I know that. However, let's face it - Windows never was a privacy-conscious choice. For those who really want to do so, they are better off with Fedora, FreeBSD or Arch Linux. Fighting Windows 10 in the fight for privacy is completely useless.

Well, what can I say? It's certainly not just "a political issue". It's way more fundamental than that. It's not 2012 anymore. We don't have to assume - we know that behind the shiny UIs and friendly personal assistants, a guy behind a curtain is busy stuffing it all into well categorized files and folders for later use.

And that, too, I know. However I disagree that it is more than a political issue - because the guy behind the curtain is doing it so that the government can class what they would consider dissidents.

"Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to:[...]" (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/default.aspx)

Again, I have read that. And I am 90% certain that, in the context it was given, it was for Outlook accounts and OneDrive private folders. It's absolutely nothing new.