Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please explain how I can have a secure online conversation with my mother easily. (Easy for me, easy for her). Is it going to involve setting up my own trusted server somewhere? Is it going to involve downloading some large undocumented project and have to build myself (on my box and her box)? Is it going to require troubleshooting arcane protocols, firewalls, and xml files? I haven't seen an easy way to have secure…
No offence but I don't think the government could possibly care less about you or the conversation with your mother. There is a long list of far more important and interesting people for them to worry about. How about using whatever is the easiest, most enjoyable and trouble free setup for her to use.
Because looked at from a societal level, more secure citizen communications means a society less able to be manipulated / blackmailed / spied on by bad actors, both domestic and foreign. It doesn't matter if this particular mother never says anything interesting / compromising in communications with her child, because there are many other situations where they will. Their child might be a politican, councillor, businessman doing signficant overseas deals, political activist, dissident.
Your logic is faulty on a number of levels:
* assumes only the US government is a potentially bad actor. This is simply not the case.
* assumes the political / technical climate will never become more hostile to milder expressions of dissent between citizens.
* assumes the parent poster's communications with his mother does not contain any interesting information to any potentially bad actors
Ultimately though, with all the theorizing aside, the parent is simply wanting a solution that provides secure communication with family members which is a very uncontroversial, reasonable goal to have.