An increasing number of world powers (i.e., goverments) are deploying hardware at both the ISP and the national levels of communications infrastructure which are capable of monitoring the traffic of thousands of people in realtime, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year 'round.
Wait a minute, wasn't this long ago established as the reason for the Internet, extending the reasons for telecommunications? And that spying by its orginators and operators built into it in such a way that nothing could be done to stop the spying otherwise why would governments allow it to happen, and not only that pump huge resources into keeping it going. The key to getting it adopted worldwide was to assure users that valiant freedom loving coders could find ways to beat the system. Sure, a few failures would occur, but in the long haul it could be made secure for users, "trust us this will work." Why look what came along: encryption, then anonymity, then lawsuits, then leakers, then data haverns, then traffic hiders, then privacy policies, then social media, then more lawsuits, then "Anonynmous", then clouds, then campaigns to beat back governmental and commercial and criminal and "Chinese" and "Iranian" and Stuxnet attacks on all these pitiful initiatives. While in the netherworld of Internet transactions the data gobblers were feeding at levels well below what boom-fed security coders and hackers could access. Except the few who welcomed the chance to feed at multi-levels of illusory security. Those who claim Internet security is impossible due to the way the system was designed and operates feed paranoia just like governments warn of enemies at the gates, knowing how bread is buttered.