I think he&#x27;s right. His statement is carefully phrased. Yes, of course, all sorts of intelligent people have argued that the tools of mass surveillance <i>could</i> be developed and <i>could</i> be abused.<p>But only a very small number of people picked up on AT&amp;T Room 101 and Echelon and so on, and saw their significance. Unfortunately those things were more like news stories than events that redefined people&#x27;s thinking. Mass surveillance simply wasn&#x27;t a part of the conversation for the vast majority of technologists <i>who mattered</i>, i.e. the ones building the products we all use.<p>The NSA leaks changed all that. Now you have the guys running WhatsApp and Apple talking about this stuff. And even though for politeness reasons they sometimes talk in hypotheticals, &quot;if we don&#x27;t encrypt it <i>could</i> be abused by <i>bad</i> governments&quot;, it&#x27;s as clear as day that what they really mean is &quot;because we don&#x27;t encrypt it <i>is</i> being abused by <i>our</i> governments&quot;.