According to a talk by Eben Moglen (<a href="https://softwarefreedom.org/events/2012/Moglen-rePublica-Berlin/transcript.html" rel="nofollow">https://softwarefreedom.org/events/2012/Moglen-rePublica-Ber...</a>), the noted connection between strong encryption and mass surveillance was a policy change by the US government. Before 2001, the policy was to repress and delay strong encryption and keep out of the public sector in order to maintain the states ability to monitor communication. After 2001 the policy changed towards mass surveillance strategies, which methods we got some insight into by the many leaks that was released a decade late by people like Snowden.<p>The connection is interesting, but the key word that I find important is the word policy. Mass surveillance is generally not a technology problem, it is a policy problem. If the government want to surveil every citizens movement they can put a camera on every street, regulate that every car has a gps and network connection that report their movements, have face recognition on every train and bus, and require government ID to buy a ticket that get sent to a government database. When the price of mass surveillance went down, the question of using it became a policy question.