I agree with your premise that those powers have very little power beyond what is surrendered to them. For example, creativity has almost solved the problem of

I agree with your premise that those powers have very little power beyond what is surrendered to them. For example, creativity has almost solved the problem of dragnet surveillance, through inventions such as public key cryptography, anonymous remailers, onion routing, and so on. (Although one must opt in to those solutions at the moment.) However, the asymmetrical advantage of creativity vanishes in the case of targeted power. A creative individual doesn't stand a chance against the smallest application of power -- brute force wins over intellect. This is an open problem, that perhaps doesn't have any solutions. My understanding is that most "threats" you mentioned are using the tactic of isolating individuals from the aggregate, because it is then that power is an advantage. Hence, endpoint hacking has taken the place of cracking ciphers, with metadata/social network analysis being a means to this end. Just as important as creativity is a positive outlook. There are still discoveries and inventions to be made. Hackers should not get discouraged, stay optimistic, and get to work.