I'm routinely hostile to people who use the "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" apology. Few positions encapsulate a more dangerous concept of proper relations between the state and its citizens. And yet, when I think about how I actually live my life, my basic assumption is "I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm okay." The difference between how I think and how I behave is pretty glaring.

Yeah, yeah, three felonies a day. I know. But there are a third of a billion people in the US. Given a billion felonies a day (more or less), it's easy to find comfort in statistics and probability. Honestly, I've got bigger and more likely problems to worry about than getting sucked into some Kafkaesque nightmare (though, like an attack by shark or bear, it's not impossible).

No, what really concerns me is the emergence of a belief that the government is an impervious citadel, fortified against any democratic control or correction. When stuff like the spying scandal, or the crime spree on Wall Street, goes unchecked (let alone unpunished) it saps political will in general, and that leads to a social environment that really is intolerable. A tiny portion of the population resorting to encryption doesn't do anything to change that. The truly appropriate response is a political one, and one that goes well beyond the mass surveillance issue in particular. Specifically, we (the people) need to recover control of our own Congress.

The mushrooming scandal with spying fits a broader pattern of regulatory capture, adding to the constellation of toxic effects that result. But at the heart of all this corruption, there's a relatively vulnerable target. That's because the mechanics of capturing legislators rest of four key pieces: private campaign finance, closed primaries, gerrymandered districts, and the revolving door between public and private offices.

Before the apathy goes to deep, we need people to coalesce around a set of conditions for winning office. Specifically, no legislator gets past the voters if they haven't committed themselves to changes that make them exclusively beholden to the voters (i.e. open primaries, non-partisan redistricting, public election finance, and a lifetime hell-ban on going to work for the industries you once "regulated"). If someone promises to do all this, but balks once elected, throw them out systematically. Keep doing this until there is a critical mass of legislators who can push through reform that makes legislators dependent on the people alone. Not their financial backers, not their future employers, not their political parties, and not the voters they hand-pick.

Lots of folks aren't worried about the NSA at all. There's a fairly disturbing number who actually think mass surveillance a good and necessary thing. But regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, there's a good chance that something about crony capitalism bothers the daylights out of you. Different people will have different reasons for insisting on the basic "you-work-for-us-alone" condition for winning office. That's fine. As long as people will hold legislators to it, the restoration of government of, by, and for the people can happen.

But aside from this - from the sustained and forcible assertion of exclusive control over legislators - I don't see how the spying problem, or really any major problem, will resolve itself satisfactorily.