One theory of security is that you can't ever be truly secure; but you can make it difficult/expensive for your security to be violated. If you lock the door, someone can always break a window, but that creates more noise and therefore more risk, making an intruder more likely to seek a softer target. A ten-foot wall can be breached, but it will likely dissuade anyone without an eleven-foot ladder.
The problem with mass surveillance is not that the NSA/etc can breach anyone they want; that's effectively always been true. It's that it's cheap to breach everyone, by default, all the time. Taking reasonable precautions such that you can't have your data swept up cheaply, instead requiring targeted human effort and/or a court order, does create a deterrent, and helps counteract the current imbalance of power between TLAs and We The People.
The problem with mass surveillance is not that the NSA/etc can breach anyone they want; that's effectively always been true. It's that it's cheap to breach everyone, by default, all the time. Taking reasonable precautions such that you can't have your data swept up cheaply, instead requiring targeted human effort and/or a court order, does create a deterrent, and helps counteract the current imbalance of power between TLAs and We The People.
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