Well we effectively 'won' the last major confrontation (crypto code) so a confrontation is not bad per se.
However this does mean that systems like PRISM and phone metadata will simply become more important as 'upstream wiretaps' go away, and the NSA will surely have other tricks up their sleeves as well.
Of course, anything we can do to make their surveillance efforts require manual intervention (e.g. having to attack an ownCloud installation from within a rented system in the same datacenter) makes those efforts less of a threat to each of us than a completely automated tracking of anyone they wish.
However this does mean that systems like PRISM and phone metadata will simply become more important as 'upstream wiretaps' go away, and the NSA will surely have other tricks up their sleeves as well.
Of course, anything we can do to make their surveillance efforts require manual intervention (e.g. having to attack an ownCloud installation from within a rented system in the same datacenter) makes those efforts less of a threat to each of us than a completely automated tracking of anyone they wish.