[andrewfong]

First, a single political defeat is not the end-all-be-all here. Politics may move slowly, but it does move (e.g. the political status of a black lesbian is undoubtedly better today than it was 50 years ago).

Second, technology and political are not an either/or proposition (or even a primary/secondary proposition). IMHO, it's something like: Privacy = Technology * Politics. Simply stressing one will give you (relative) diminishing returns if you don't push the other as well.

Good encryption can make it difficult for the NSA to conduct widespread online surveillance, but given (a) the difficulty of getting crypto right, (b) the sheer number of organizations with the ability to (intentionally or unintentionally) compromise security for a large number of users, and (c) the relatively low impact privacy and security have on purchasing decisions for many (if not most) people, it's something like the size of the NSA's budget (a political question) that will ultimately determine whether mass surveillance is prohibitively expensive or merely inconvenient.