I feel this is the largest threat to freedom in the US in a long time, possibly ever. If the US has the ability to decrypt traffic from all of the major players

I feel this is the largest threat to freedom in the US in a long time, possibly ever. If the US has the ability to decrypt traffic from all of the major players I think, based on their history, they'll likely try to collect everything. All emails, purchases, internet searches, and so on would be cataloged. For example, if I applied for a government job in the future I could have my allegiance called into question for writing this comment. They would easily know who all but the most vigilant are based on information provided during purchases, correlated with IP addresses and cookie information. The real criminals of course would use any number of other systems (say those based in other countries) which would not be collected in the dragnet. It would only be the average citizen who suffers.