The only way to prevent surveillance is with a technical solution (encryption), not a legal solution (more laws).
You need both. By that same logic do you think the constitution and bill of rights is a pointless endeavor? Our government has violated these rights many times in our history. I could just as easily say that the constitutional amendments passed after the civil war were pointless because there was still institutionalized discrimination and racism for another hundred years.
How much did encryption help Lavabit? The court forced them to hand over the encryption keys anyway.
We need to change the laws and place proper oversight over the NSA and other intelligence agencies with real penalties for the violation of our rights. Encryption alone is not enough.
This. The flagrant violations of our constitution that have taken place are tantamount to treason and the guilty parties deserve punishment at the level of life in prison. And I will vote for any candidate that has the intestinal fortitude to say so.
Lavabit has a pretty bad system because it did not take the law into account at all and was run by someone that does not seem to understand legal concepts very well. From what I understand, the court that forced them was not FISA, but a plain old federal trial court. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
What's more, people tend to prefer centralised systems at the moment, for the sake usability. E.g., I don't see how Androids automatic photo backup could be as friction-less otherwise.
Which is insane. It absolutely should be.
Unfortunately, I don't forsee Congress doing much to solve this any time soon.
TL;DR - If congress made it "illegal" it wouldn't change anything. That they refuse to, will change everything.
Also, the third-party doctrine is sort of a recognition of the right the blow the whistle on crimes you see. It's not even (generally) a bad thing. It's only our government's too-cozy of a relationship with too much of the industry that means it's not whistle-blowing but twisted-arm leaks.
Government rules by the mandate of the people. And we don't owe it a n-year mandate, or the completion of a grand plan, or trust, etc. When it steps out of line it is illegitimate despite its "legality" in its own laws.
The encryption game is rigged since the NSA and other government actors are able to use public funds to sabotage it. So the legal angle is still important.
I think it would be interesting to push in that direction (it does not prevent from trying to encrypt your data as well).
I'd say both have their place however focus on protecting the legality of encryption, not on making it illegal to spy. Bolster security by design with law, don't use law to haphazardly stop spooks from doing spooky things.
The problem is that your backend servers can no longer operate on that data in any meaningful way. For this reason, full end-to-end encryption is likely not realistic for certain applications.
Simpler applications, like iMessage, can and do implement end-to-end encryption without much difficulty at all.