I agree that this is a political problem, and needs a political solution. In the meanwhile, a couple of years ago, I started working in a team to work on this: https://register.blib.us - It lets your software/server manage your friendships (social network), and lets the hardware sit anywhere in the world. At some point, we plan to go open source, so that backdoors are patched (or known openly). Uses openid for auth, and provide enough providers in different countries. Its not adhoc, just point to point encrypted between trusted parties. I would love to hear ideas on how to make this rock solid. And of course nothing better than users who care.

I think it would be more fun to go the other way. Make it possible for anyone to conduct surveillance on anyone else.

What would be the reaction of politicians if their every phone call, email, message were able to be read and published?

Politicians have bodyguards that can put a bullet through the head of anyone who acts on the information, sometimes even legally!

On the other hand, do you really want the neighbor's meth-head boyfriend to have NSA style access to your records? to your children's records?

Seriously guys, a world with zero privacy may sound kind of cool... in theory. But you have to realize that there are actors much more nefarious than most governments on Earth, and the impact to the lives of those who become "persons of interest" for that kind of actors happen to be more immediate and unpleasant.

Not to disagree with you, but those bodyguards would be subject to the same surveillance, and the thought experiment is meant to explore that too.

But as for what this would be like, most likely it would be a society like the Borg (TNG Borg, pre-queen, not VOY Borg).

I'm not familiar with Star Trek lore. Will have to look at it.

This has been discussed before, but a political problem requires a political solution (cessation of surveillance through legislation and holding violators to account with imprisonment and fines.)

The problem is that political solutions become a political problem to those in power, who then impose their own political solution thereto.

The USA Constitution makes it completely clear: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." This became a political problem for the powerful, so they concocted a legal notion amounting to the suffix "unless the search is imposed on everyone without particular cause" which has proven surprisingly effective and acceptable to the general public.

When all branches of government conspire to ignore the rules, more rules won't stop them.

The problem with political solutions is that politics change. We need both a political solution and a technological solution. As an example, legal protections for people who run Tor exits or anonymous remailers -- the technology would help protect us from future abuses by the government, and the policy would help get the technology widely deployed to the point of being impractical to shove back into the bottle.

IMO, a better way is to create technical solutions that force politicians and bureaucrats to change their lowdown ways.

The political game is obviously rigged against us. Our strength is the technical solution, not the political solution.

How is this going to work, if, in case you would be trying to be a politician yourself in order to fight the injustice, by the time you have any influence, you are already motivated to increase the surveillance, not cease it. Problem is much deeper than "political misunderstanding" between the people and the government.

I was thinking about it. I came to a conclusion, that there would be no practical way of avoiding such channels. For example wireless mesh nets - too complicated and too fragile for even basic connection. And any kind of network architecture with central routes, like it is now - in case everyone would start to use secure encrypted connections, could just be shut down, laws would be established on what kind of communications are allowed and maybe even online ID pass would be a requirement. It is really a tough spot for our generation, it is a breaking point. If we fail this, people might be enslaved in such a way it would be near impossible for the future people to reclaim their freedoms we have lost. And we have not too much freedoms left when you think about it. We can't communicate freely, we can't travel freely, we can't even live on our own, we can't trade goods on our own.

Every wireless router & device should have been shipped, from early on in the history of WiFi, with default-on support for ad-hoc networks. Few and fragile at first, in many areas would have grown to a robust "backbone" by now and will only grow larger & stronger with device proliferation. Account for priority traffic & battery life, of course, but even low-level support would have grown very difficult to intercept. Alas, the desire for central control, as usual, overruled.

Yes. 90% of mass surveillance is worthless and mundane. If only the 10% of people who think and say things that are interesting were to conceal their communications, the NSA would be left with analyzing the content of inanities.

Which is why you study metadata, not content, since knowing who's talking to who (and how much encryption they're using) is always going to be more valuable against a competent adversary.

Of course, most adversaries of the US aren't competent. Planning to jihad something? A good first step to not getting caught would be to never visit a jihadi website in the first place.