Political change on it's own won't work. They will still keep the infrastructure in case they need to spy on someone(with a court order). But if they have the infrastructure , conceptually it's just a press of button again to full blown illegal surveillance.
there has been infrastructure to read snail mail contents for 200 years. Doesn't matter, the US Gov isn't routinely reading snail mail because of politics. I think he's right, make it a political issues. Actually, more: make it political issue, encryption issue, hosting issue, social issue (denied nsa contracting recently based on Snowden), I mean total war - make their life as difficult as possible using all means possible. As long as it's legal of course.
Doesn't really matter. To read a regular mail you just need so much more in legal terms compared to reading somebody's email that it's just not worth contemplating no matter what. It's not like with emails where after 6 months they automatically are open to the Government sniffing. Because of the political reasons it's not even worth contemplating -- look -- you need regular court order, not some BS whatever rubber-stamp.
