In my experience Americans get (rightfully) nervous just by the presence of police officers, the thought of protesting or even talking about politics. A US conflict involving guns is more likely to resemble Cambodia than Vietnam.
What "legally-enforced privacy" are you talking about? In most of the world, at least until recently, Internet traffic has been in the same category as radio traffic i.e. essentially unprotected. Who is this "we" you're talking about? The people who are upset over privacy are journalist, lawyers and politicians not geeks making bank at tech companies. Why do you think "technologically enforced privacy" will work when there's already been 20 years to criticize standard agencies and companies for their failures to establish privacy in Internet communication?
Take a look at any given day on HN. Programmers want freedom to program in unrestricted languages like C, they want to make the high salaries of data mining companies, they want to continue using protocols that are hard to make secure like e-mail etc.
I don't think you have to decide much over which fight to fight considering there isn't really one in the first place.