The only way to truly roll back surveillance is political action to dismantle it at the state level. Unfortunately Snowden always points away from this avenue t

The only way to truly roll back surveillance is political action to dismantle it at the state level. Unfortunately Snowden always points away from this avenue to niche, technological pseudo-solutions like cryptography which have by now proven unable to disrupt the system's functioning as a whole. Of course, that political action could take many forms. In a 1968 short story titled 2068 A.D. Frank Herbert wrote: "Prominent in 2068 history books is the account of the violence at the turn of the century when people revolted against computer control. Computer stored data (growing out of the old National Data Center) had been used to harass and persecute those whose views didn't conform with those of the majority. In the bloody revolt, most computers were destroyed, their data erased."