That's true if you believe WhatsApp (and I do with some probability of certainty--not certain enough to trust it with data I wouldn't want the government to see

That's true if you believe WhatsApp (and I do with some probability of certainty--not certain enough to trust it with data I wouldn't want the government to see, but enough that I'm comfortable hackers won't get my bank info). But, the NSA approach to data collection is basically to vacuum it all up and, if possible, decrypt it later. This has two implications: 1. Metadata. "We kill people based on metadata" isn't a joke, it's a quote from Michael Hayden, ex-executive in both the NSA and CIA. End-to-end encryption doesn't hide who you're talking to or when. 2. It seems unlikely that it will be computationally possible for them to decrypt all traffic, but it would only surprise me a little if AES128 is breakable for high-value targets in the next 20 years: increased computing power, better multi-threading, better cryptanalysis algorithms, maybe quantum computing or some completely unexpected technology; it's hard to say what will come along. In short: mining encrypted data still matters.