I think that's true, though there's a third axis, companies, which is a big part of that failure. One major change in the tech scene over the past few decades is that a significant proportion of us effectively went over the other side: many techies now work for companies whose goal is, as with the government, to collect data on people, construct profiles, and share it around as convenient. That left rather fewer (though still vocal) people working for the opposite goal of anonymity, non-trackability, and flexible/modifiable pseudonymous identities. It also made it much easier for the government to piggyback on that tracking infrastructure we ourselves are building.