Privacy and security concerns became more "real" for more people with the
revelations of Snowden.
Security is an ongoing and ever-changing thing. Always was. There are new
exploits all the time, security is never fully achieved. Always trade offs.
Online privacy in the form of being anonymous isn't possible practically
speaking. Being pseudonymous is more possible, having separate online
identities/habits/hardware and so on. Difficult for most people.
If a powerful adversary wants to know something, they will find out
regardless of privacy and security measures, probably regardless of law.
As a cryptographer and research professor at Johns Hopkins University said
recently, "Unfortunately active software exploits only work if you have a
target in mind. If your goal is mass surveillance, you need to build
insecurity in from the start. That means working with vendors to add
backdoors." http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/09/on-nsa.html
For decades software was free and the source code was available. That started
changing in the 1970's. Stallman believed in those values and saw them
slipping away so he did something about it and here we are today.
The FSF is against mass surveillance.
http://www.fsf.org/search?SearchableText=surveillance
Beyond hardware and software there is mind control. This is nothing new.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
Using an "internet of things" to implement it is already working.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/20/apples-iphone-5s-and-5c-launch-draws-big-crowds-including-biggest-ever-line-at-nyc-flagship-store/
CIA Director Promotes Surveillance, Endorses Bugging Home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJBfp7ySHtE
Freedom is contrary to this.
