You reap what was sowed. Yes, what the NSA was (is!) doing is completely absurd. The net effect of that is a backlash against <i>all</i> information gathering by authorities and the practical effect of that is that companies will now be differentiated to greater or lesser extent by the amount of privacy their communications platforms give to ordinary citizens. This is what drives https anywhere and other such efforts.<p>That &#x27;well meaning judges&#x27; have a harder time obtaining evidence in those cases where wire-taps are authorized with sufficient reasons and specificity (sp?) is a direct consequence of that.<p>But you shouldn&#x27;t complain about the companies that merely provide what the market now wants.<p>Technology is strange that way, we, technologists can relatively easily make boxes that we ourselves can no longer open and those boxes can be used to transport information from one private individual to another.<p>Yes, the existence of such boxes may be an obstacle to law enforcement. But the rights of ordinary citizens are trampled to such an extent that I&#x27;d be willing to live in a society where those rights are restored if the consequence of that is that the police will have to work that much harder to gather evidence or that some criminals will get away with their crimes.<p>Authorities have overstepped their bounds to such an extent that this is now an acceptable compromise.