He likely means that email encryption (the good) is incrementally achievable, while RetroShare and Darknet (the perfect) requires a much more disruptive change.
Very serious attacks on democratic principles have been carried out behind our backs, for a very long time, apparently.
That is why I think, in order to counter these threats to society appropriately, disruptive approaches should really be welcomed and preferred as often as possible.
And then, of course, it's not an either/or question. Both should be promoted alongside, as lots of different people have lots of different needs/requirements.
(Personally, I use both RetroShare and encrypted email, and migrate as many people as possible over to total encryption as soon as possible.)
Email encryption is going to be effective against 99% of relevant attacks, and if the NSA wants to know what you're doing, they'll put a bug in your laptop and, no, you won't notice.
Remember, even with lofty "serious attacks on democratic principles" going on, you're still infinity times more likely to have your bank account information stolen by drive-by script kiddies with a 0-day than be a target of government persecution on the back of illicitly obtained intelligence. Even then, it's highly unlikely that even the NSA has the capacity to decrypt internet traffic at scale.
I know, I know, I don't even consider myself a target, at all. I don't really do this to just protect myself.
It's just that we should all do our best in order to erect the collective hurdle that the mass surveillance efforts now require. There's nothing lofty about democracy being attacked, it's very real. And don't forget that you can't really do encryption on your own, you depend on all your contacts doing it, too. Society needs to make that as normal as brushing their teeth.
