As a non-US citizen, they can keep all my communications forever anyway. It seems to me that my only redress is to encrypt as much as I can now so as to chaff that one time at some point in the future when I do have something to hide.
Not encrypting to stay secure is just plain fucking stupid. If you don't encrypt they can read your shit anyways. Plus "reasonably believed to contain secret meaning" in all likelihood means "whatever the fuck we want".
As someone else already noted: There's strength in numbers. Let's just encrypt everything and have those fuckers deal with humongous amounts of data, most of which will be completely useless. Shit, if you're inclined to do so let some piece of software run all day that just produces encrypted gibberish and sends it off to random recipients.
edit: yeah, I was talking out my ass, get over it. I still think it's imprudent to assume that encrypted files may never be compromised in the future.
Edit: It would probably just be easier at that point to ban encryption going forward.
You couldn't even increment every position of a 256-bit key using the energy our Sun could provide, let alone brute force 256-bit AES.
> Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.
You probably don't need to use 3 cyphers. Just make sure you're storing your private key somewhere safe.
s/Moore's Law/technological advance and\/or advances in cryptanalysis/
Just so you know; the reasoning behind huge NSA camp they are building in Utah is not because huge camps are cool, but because someone at decisions level was presented with average number of data an average citizen of us soil digest per day, and that number was overwhelming.
So, if we all encrypt everything, 2 things gonna happen:
Either they will ask to quadruple their funding and build 10 more Utah-type camps "because we need more storage and CPU resources to catch those pesky terrorist", or
The problem will be so huge for the government that it will ban usage of PGP/encrypting. The light version of banning would be, for example: extra tax if you encrypt your data. I can see it easily reasoned: terrorist use PGP encryption so the government uses lots of resources (that equals to money) to crack those down so in order to keep their operation running they need extra money. Of course if you do not use PGP you don't have to pay that tax. If you do use PGP, you are required to pay it. Simple checkbox on your tax form. Now, if they every catch you with some encrypted files that they can reasonably say belongs to you (just like the can/cannot tell the child porn files belong to you [they can always upload them themselves]), you will be charge with a severe fine or imprisonment up to 25 years for aiding terrorist [by not supporting NSA Encryption Unit financially -- remember Bush motto? you not with us, you with terrorist].
So, long story short. Just pissing them off and encrypting everything will not fix the issue. It will just give them more reasons to ask for more funding. And they will get them.