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.