»To protect against secret surveillance, Snowden said, we need to make encryption a part of everything we do. "The bottom line is that encryption does work," he said. "We need to not think of encryption as an arcane, dark art, but as basic protection for the digital world."«
The other element of his encryption comment: the problem is that end-point security is so weak that encryption often isn't effective. That may mean key "exfiltration" (theft), or simply having cleartext access to content.
Schneier addressed this in his recent Stanford lecture on the NSA and Internet security. Long, > 1 hour, but very much worth viewing.
from http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-bottom-line-is-encrypti...