Both your comments and the GP's ring true for me. - Individuals can communicate in secrecy, thanks to encryption and the internet, much more easily than before

Both your comments and the GP's ring true for me. - Individuals can communicate in secrecy, thanks to encryption and the internet, much more easily than before. This means that wiretapping as we used to know it is nearly impossible for some categories of conversations. - Surveillance is nearly omnipresent, partly as a way to combat the above. I don't like the erosions of liberty that you mention, or the militarization of police, but I can see why some of the things we take for granted (instant secret communications, encrypted volumes, thumb drives that can be hidden) and consider to be valuable can also frustrate law enforcement doing what we have told them is their mandate (catch bad actors).