It probably isn't necessary to replace the hardware infrastructure if privacy and security again become fashionable in software development. A great deal of important peer-to-peer, encryption and general data-obfuscation research has been done already. The trouble is, as Schneier so eloquently put it, that spying is the business model of the Internet.

But we can take another approach.

If this REALLY matters, we should be directing our attention not to some nebulous and almost certainly unenforceable government action, but rather to the eye of the storm: the very things we are building.

This is good mind-fodder if you have a moment to spare: http://zeroknowledgeprivacy.org/