I think we all agree that progress on the technological front is important, but I disagree that you can ignore the political and cultural fronts. Even if you h

I think we all agree that progress on the technological front is important, but I disagree that you can ignore the political and cultural fronts. Even if you have perfect encryption, if the government can demand anyone to decrypt anything at anytime (else go to jail) without due process or transparency, that's going to undermine the effectiveness of technological tools. Even modest legal protections for privacy will greatly increase the value of technological tools. Along the same lines, what's the point of all our great tools if no one uses them? Some privacy tech is more successful than others, but why is most email sent as plain text? Technology has been around forever. A lot can be said for increasing ease of use and so on, but until encrypted email is easier to use than unencrypted email (seems unlikely), what motivation do users have to switch if they don't value privacy? To get users to make the switch, they need to understand the value of privacy. This is a social problem, not a technological problem.