> ...if it's all being performed by private companies, in industries where there is very little choice of competitors, there's no violation of rights and no way for us to avoid having our private messages be scrutinized by some authority.
If those private companies serve as the regime's lackeys doing their bidding to monitor citizens communications they should not be treated like private companies but as state actors.
[1] where encrypted should be read as "encrypted without _NSAKEY (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY)" et al.
Imagine that we had the most thoroughly crafted law imaginable to prevent private messages from being blocked or modified.
You still have to take those companies to court, which cost a ton of money, fight them over years, and even if you win, then what?
The only workable strategies I see at this point are to fight to preserve individual choice, and the ability to connect point-to-point.