[MikeNomad]

And I thought I am cynical enough to no longer be surprised by GOV's process to circumvent the Constitution and make nineteen eighty-four the reality. I was wrong.

As a long-time IT Guy who has grown tired and disgusted with GOV's fascist, class-war behavior, with this court decision I say to them:

Bring. It. The. FSCK. On.

While maintaining an air-gapped rig is a PITA, I can do that.

While conducting my Connected Life via a live image, removable-media-based system is a PITA, I can do that as well.

While good encryption slathered on everything is annoying, it is doable.

BTW, GOV... As long as you are connected to a network, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy;

Expect your thoughts and beliefs laid bare; your plans to be known by others sooner, rather than later; your secrets to be learned by all;

You want to see what Cyber Warfare _truly_ looks like?

You can't handle the truth.

[whamlastxmas]

Unless you're willing to take your computer with you everywhere, it's still easily compromised with hardware modifications when you're out of the home. Your router's firmware probably has multiple 0 days the NSA/FBI could exploit. Intel's Management Engine is an effortless backdoor into every laptop and desktop you have. Securing your smart phone against privacy issues is a lost cause.

The only real option you have left is using a typewriter with a one-time pad in a sound isolated room with a sheet over your head. And even then what you type isn't anonymous, it's just encrypted to withstand everything up to, but not including, some government agent holding a wrench (insert xkcd comic here)

[MikeNomad]

Seriosly, some of that was pretty funny...

At a superficial level, I think I would notice extra chips/wiring/HD showing up on a naked Mo-board.

Going further, as you wish to approach this in pseudo-apsolutist terms, GOV would simply choke on any effort to go _that_ far. Be it the Hardware Effort or the Software/Data Collection and Processing Effort (times many many millions), they would gag on The Spew. Yes, no encryption protects data for ever, blah blah. Good Encryption and other impediments just makes persuit/enforcement not worth the effort [insert THX-1138 reference and every real-world example of governments failing to absolutely control their populace here].

And since I am willing to talk in Absolute Terms, GOV is lousy at math. They may know something about Social Psychology, Propaganda, et al, but the Citizenry has both the guns and the numbers.