> Our expectations of privacy are valid in private contexts, like a home or business. Public contexts, like a busy shopping center or the internet, do not contain inherent guarantees of privacy. Even though one can normally assume that no one dangerous is listening in, it's a risk you always take when you engage in any conversation or behavior in a visible location.

Or even if you talk in your house with your door wide open. Does anyone else remember Star Trek VI?

But either way we also don't expect every conversation we make outside to be monitored as a matter of course. To the extent that NSA is doing this we are right to be very upset.

The flipside is that even before email there were few options for communications between third-parties that could not be intercepted at all (without a full warrant) by the U.S. government within the U.S. Probably USPS was it (though later telephones received that same protection). And there were about zero methods if you were talking international communications (maybe diplomatic pouch was safe, probably nothing else was). So in that regard modern comms are still an improvement.

But I do agree with you that things people need to have private, need to be encrypted, as there are more threats out there than just the NSA.