Firstly, the means to make mass surveillance significantly more difficult and expensive already exist, we just don't use them routinely as a society[…]but I thi

Firstly, the means to make mass surveillance significantly more difficult and expensive already exist, we just don't use them routinely as a society[…]but I think you could have a situation with much more transparency and oversight than we have today to keep that power in check and directed to its intended purposes. One has to acknowledge that it is also not presently in the interests of those who have kept it so. Transparency is a two way street, if everyone as individuals had access to such information that is in the hands of the few to leverage, many aspects of our society could also be made better. After all, "encrypt all the things" makes one wonder about the effort exerted is worth it all, especially if it enables individuals to deceive/mislead/exaggerate to others in the name of privacy. Secondly, one of the most disappointing things about this whole affair is that our own intelligence and security services (I'm in the UK) seem to be more concerned with covering their backsides and keeping tight with their US chums than they are with actually, you know, providing for the security of their own country. I question how much "security" there needs to be when governments, corporations and individuals go to such lengths to hide such information from others to maintain the asymmetry of information from individuals of the public, and wonder if they're would be more "security" provided if the public who funds such boondoggles had access to such infrastructure. I'd rather have API keys than the hand-waving/profiteering/"we know whats best for you" media/policy makers and it's enablers tell us what they think we, the public, should know of what they do on our behalf, because only they should be responsible for protecting us, and not ourselves as individuals? I never have expected any government to protect "their" people, when all of them to some degree are actively harming them and continue to do so through various means unaccountably with claims onto behalf of the public.