Hahah. If you refuse to go the legal route there is nothing you can do but live with the surveillance and protect yourself. It's the only route that could possibly work.
I laugh because the legal route is the route people are supposed to trust (you know...checks and balances). It's just funny to see people with no faith in the system.
It's funny to see you being so naive as to think that there are forces in politics that have gone to great lengths to ensure that peaceful dissent has no substantial effect.
There are the same organizations that have conspired in the murder, shaming, and threatening of peace activists across the whole world. What makes you think you are invulnerable from this?
Do you remember the case of the DC Madam, the lady who was being charged of running a prostitution ring in DC, who "committed suicide"?
Remember Iran-Contra?
Do you not see what they do against whistleblowers? Do you realize the only reason why you're hearing about Snowden is because he is the only dissenter out of many who actually got and change done? And this is because he went public so that, unlike all the poor saps who "believed in the system", and "went through the proper channels", the NSA had no choice but to do some damage control.
Do you remember the goverment talking heads calling Snowden "incompetent"?
You can go and believe in whatever you want, but the people who do that believing are not the ones doing positive change right now.
"It's just funny to see people with no faith in the system."
I think it is more "alarming" than "funny." It is not a new phenomenon, of course, but it is one that should cause us a great deal of concern. We have governments, laws, and legal processes to ensure that various disputes are resolved peacefully and with respect for everyone's rights. When people start losing their faith in the system, they must also start finding "alternative" ways to resolve their conflicts.
It's not like this is an entirely theoretical question, or a quaint question from history books. There are people in America who have stepped outside the bounds of civilization.
What do you think should be done with the MDs who designed and supervised methods of torture at Guantanamo, or the torturers themselves?
The people at the telcos who enable mass surveillance are comparable to the Stasi informants. These people had severely restricted career prospects after their roles were revealed.
For some people, the concept of action outside of the officially endorsed channels is so alien, they implicitly treat it as though it is categorically illegal and unethical.
I don't even think it is intentional, they just aren't familiar with grappling with such concepts and make fundamental blunders when talking about this sort of thing.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man." — George Bernard Shaw
Unconventional thinking is what hackers and founders use to shape their world -- it's part of what makes Silicon Valley great. And creative, unconventional approaches doesn't mean illegal, quite the opposite. Creativity is design within constraints.
Today it's a letter by Sasha Beilinson in the "Notices of the American Mathematical Society". Tomorrow there could be another, then another.
I laugh because the legal route is the route people are supposed to trust (you know...checks and balances). It's just funny to see people with no faith in the system.