Hear hear! In fact, I'd like to take it a step further. Let's get out of our own electrical closets and assume The Man is always listening. Assume your freedom means everyone is listening because you're broadcasting. There is a huge lesson from the history of the gay community in the US. Back during World War II and for decades after, sailors in the Pacific would get dishonorably discharged for being found as homosexuals. They'd be dropped off in San Francisco for discharge. This fact would be stamped on their papers: no escape. Every potential employer knows, your family knows... so there is no point in going home. Suddenly you're stuck in a major city with all the other dishonorably discharged and smokin' hot dudes. Might as well start a bar! The point is that they couldn't choose to come out of the closet: they were thrown out. Thus when the crackdowns and the homophobic violence got bad enough, the gay community unified. Everyone in America, possibly the world, has been thrown out of the electrical closet. Our online words are public. Suck it up, know it all the time. White male privilege can't save you this time.
I get the point, but it's not so much my privacy I am worried about. I'm most worried about the oppression and coercion that comes with a surveillance state. When these abilities trickle down to the local level, corruption has a powerful weapon. If they want to hurt me, they hurt my daughter. Or, they threaten to hurt the daughter of another guy they choose to hurt me. We managed to keep physical mail from dragnet surveillance. We could do the same for email.
Right. "We must do something..." I get you. I even agree. Where we part ways is "...starting with empty gestures." I get tired of it. It's tedious. Changing everyone's facebook photo to a green screen didn't save a single job in Hollywood, so let's stop pretending that e-advocacy matters.