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we are setting ourselves up as a society for some major challenges in the future if we don't hold our privacy as a fundamental human right.
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Sure, but are we really losing "privacy" by laws that potentially allow the government to read emails if they need or want to? Think about the past prior to the Internet and email. We communicated by totally insecure phone lines that were easily tapped by almost anyone. We sent snail mail with intimate letters that not only could the government intercept but could easily be stolen out of our mailboxes or read by some bored postal worker. Email, even without encryption, is infinitely more "private" than how we communicated just a few years ago. All of this talk of "reading" of emails is really bogus. Fastmail, Gmail, and all the others don't let humans sit there and "read" our email. The reading is done by software to do things like allow for searching, to prevent phishing and spam, and to target advertising in some cases. But, random government officials looking for unpopular political views aren't sifting through your email. Could they? Possibly, but imagine the waste of time and effort. What are they going to do with the 53 million emails a day that discuss worries about government snooping on emails? Could they possibly zero in on you if they wanted to? Sure, but they could also do so based on intercepted cell calls, opening your mail, monitoring your spending habits, etc., etc. There are just too many avenues of attack to expect total privacy in life, and most people do not. I think all of us tend to worry about the wrong things. I am personally much more worried about the lack of editorial oversight and standards on major social media, like Facebook and Twitter, than I am about the privacy of my email. We are allowing pure lies and fake information to be broadcast constantly to billions of people, and it has nothing to do with privacy.