[caribousoup]

Isn't it common to assume that everything connected to the internet is illegally monitored, recorded, and exploited to the fullest extent?

After Snowden, how could anyone not be aware of this? You see the director of the NSA blatantly, and provably, lying under oath. Multiple whistleblowers saying this stuff has been going on for almost two decades. These agencies operate outside of the law already... regardless of what any legislation states they are, or are not, allowed to do.

Isn't this already obvious? Not in a conspiratorial paranoid sort of way, but I mean, just look at the world pragmatically. Maybe I lost all faith years ago, but this is not surprising to me in the least.

All you can really do is look out for yourself, if you have the technical know-how, and understand what to avoid doing. In an ideal world you don't solve problems like this, you solve them through public policy, not technological workarounds. But we don't live in an ideal world... most of the public is unequipped to discuss the gradual, invisible, insidious undermining of their civil liberties through ever-present opaque technologies.