> So the problem is, what does it mean for the public in general to care?
That's actually simple - public should use strong encryption. That's it. I.e. those who care about such violation of civil freedoms have no other option anyway, if attempts to prevent this surveillance will continue to fail (and with the current power - they most probably will).
They should. I agree, however effectively using encryption not as simple as it sounds (both hardware, software and user interfaces need to work together and well) for this to work. On the other side I predict using encryption is becoming strange/weird/suspicious. There is an already well designed propaganda framework to portray those who care about these issues as associated with all kinds of scary crimes.
I predict in the future after a couple of high profile scape goat cases where a famous suspected terrorist, illegal movie downloader, or say whistle blower, cannot be prosecuted because they used encryption, the use of encryption will become illegal.
The problem with outlawing encryption is: everyone needs it for business purposes and to protect public / private infrastructure. If SSL encryption were to be forbidden, e-commerce would become very difficult...
That's actually simple - public should use strong encryption. That's it. I.e. those who care about such violation of civil freedoms have no other option anyway, if attempts to prevent this surveillance will continue to fail (and with the current power - they most probably will).