There is no technical solution that works when the federal government can seize/inspect/hack into any computer located in the United States or in friendly countries, as well as hack into computers anywhere in the world. They can then access the decryption private keys of anyone, and thus all encryption can be defeated, along with any other means of attempting to hide information from prying eyes. If Google itself is unable to protect its own network from NSA intrusion, what makes you think anyone else is able to?

Remember, the NSA is tasked with spying on Russian, Chinese, (and everybody else's) systems, and given that the Russians and Chinese have great mathematical and computing minds, is should be assumed that the NSA is employing equally great minds in the USA in order to penetrate the military (including nuclear and biological weapons systems), government, commercial, and individual systems of these foreign powers.

That the NSA turned the sophisticated looking glass inward to spy on the citizenry, in such an insecure manner, is the problem.

The other problem is that, well, citizens of the United States can be terrorists. If the NSA is tasked with stopping terrorism, then they, of necessity, need to monitor everyone, including US citizens.

So the answer lies in the terrorism part: Everyone went bonkers wondering why the government agencies were not able to stop the Boston bombers, yet when they do try to collect information and analyze it in a manner consistent with stopping this threat, they are then denounced as violators of the Constitution.

I have a sobering proposal: We tell the NSA to not worry about terrorism.

On the other hand, we come to terms with the notion that terrorists do what they do because it does terrorize us, and we make a conscious decision that we are going to not care anymore and accept a certain amount of casualties in exchange for the government not spying on us.

We accept that 30,000 Americans die on our roads each year in car accidents. We accept that another 30,000 Americans die of gun violence every year. Could we not accept that 30,000 Americans die of terrorism related incidents every year?

I lived in France in the 1980's. We had a lot of terrorism. Bombs in malls, bombs in restaurants, bombs in the street in front of synagogues. After a while, callous as this may seem, the French just stopped caring anymore. It had become routine. Then the terrorists stopped. There was no reason for them to keep doing this, because the French would just put it on page 4 of the paper, next to the political scandal section. The police would close the street, clean up, etc.

Yes, these were tragedies for the families, but not more than the tragedies for victims of gun violence, drug overdose, and horrible car accidents that mangled the bodies of children beyond recognition.

Taking away everyone's car is not the solution to car accidents. Taking away everyone's guns, swords, pick-axes, chainsaw, power drill, kitchen knives, and banning boxing, wrestling, and martial arts is not the solution to murder.
Likewise, taking away everyone's freedom is not the solution to terrorism.

Because taking away everyone's freedom's been tried before, and the human spirit of freedom asserts itself, and people die on both sides as they rebel and attempt to overthrow the oppressors.

And that is why the NSA and other agencies that spy on Americans must be muzzled.