The US government has betrayed the Internet. We need to take it back

Schneier does know this, and explicitly said this.

-jsq

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/05/government-betrayed-internet-nsa-spying

Three, we can influence governance. I have resisted saying this up to now,
and I am saddened to say it, but the US has proved to be an unethical
steward of the internet. The UK is no better. The NSA's actions are
legitimizing the internet abuses by China, Russia, Iran and others. We
need to figure out new means of internet governance, ones that makes it
harder for powerful tech countries to monitor everything. For example,
we need to demand transparency, oversight, and accountability from our
governments and corporations.

Unfortunately, this is going play directly into the hands of totalitarian
governments that want to control their country's internet for even more
extreme forms of surveillance. We need to figure out how to prevent that,
too. We need to avoid the mistakes of the International Telecommunications
Union, which has become a forum to legitimize bad government behavior,
and create truly international governance that can't be dominated or
abused by any one country.

Generations from now, when people look back on these early decades of
the internet, I hope they will not be disappointed in us. We can ensure
that they don't only if each of us makes this a priority, and engages in
the debate. We have a moral duty to do this, and we have no time to lose.

Dismantling the surveillance state won't be easy. Has any country that
engaged in mass surveillance of its own citizens voluntarily given up
that capability? Has any mass surveillance country avoided becoming
totalitarian? Whatever happens, we're going to be breaking new ground.

Again, the politics of this is a bigger task than the engineering, but
the engineering is critical. We need to demand that real technologists
be involved in any key government decision making on these issues. We've
had enough of lawyers and politicians not fully understanding technology;
we need technologists at the table when we build tech policy.

To the engineers, I say this: we built the internet, and some of us have
helped to subvert it. Now, those of us who love liberty have to fix it.

True I shot from the hip, he does address the concerns later. I'm used to implementing technologies to solve security problems. It's just damn frustrating to have your hands tied in such a way that you can not and that's the position that I see myself and most other network ops in.

Our customers decided at the ballot box that they didn't want protection and it was acceptable to entrust their privacy to the system. They seem to forget that decision when they ask if they are vulnerable to this type of intercept and what they can do about it. The answer is not much because I will not and can not break the law, it's unethical and wrong. I will encourage people to seek to change the laws to encourage true end to end security but the odds of that happening are near 0.
Sam

The answer is
not much because I will not and can not break the law, it's unethical
and wrong.

I invite you to consider the concept of civil disobedience--where the law
is unethical or wrong it can be argued that it's also unethical and wrong
to FOLLOW the law.

I haven't yet been placed in a position, and I doubt I will given the arc
of my career, where I would have to make the choice between enabling this
kind of surveillance quietly or blowing the whistle on it. I hope, as I
imagine most of us do, that I'd choose to do the "right" thing (and
correctly determine which option is "right", which is probably the real
trick).