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But the privacy/security pendulum is always in motion. If Apple perceives a change in public sentiment, perhaps in response to future horrific acts, there’s no law that keeps them from changing with it.

Business considerations aside, Apple is under absolutely no obligation to continue encrypting its users’ data or making it harder for third parties to access. The company could change its mind at any time, or offer the government all the help it wants, without Apple violating anyone’s civil liberties. Its actions either way are entirely voluntary.

Which may speak to a bigger problem for technology users. As more and more of our public life moves from town squares to cloud servers, Internet companies increasingly run the governments of our virtual selves. The digital constitution takes the form of Internet protocols developed by the engineers; Internet laws are the terms and conditions of contracts between product developers and their customers.

For more than two years the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies have warned that encrypted communications are creating a “going dark” crisis that will keep them from tracking terrorists and kidnappers.

Now, a study in which current and former intelligence officials participated concludes that the warning is wildly overblown, and that a raft of new technologies — like television sets with microphones and web-connected cars — are creating ample opportunities for the government to track suspects, many of them worrying.

The study argues that the phrase ignores the flood of new technologies “being packed with sensors and wireless connectivity” that are expected to become the subject of court orders and subpoenas, and are already the target of the National Security Agency as it places “implants” into networks around the world to monitor communications abroad.

The products, ranging from “toasters to bedsheets, light bulbs, cameras, toothbrushes, door locks, cars, watches and other wearables,” will give the government increasing opportunities to track suspects and in many cases reconstruct communications and meetings.

After Snowden revealed the National Security Agency was collecting data en masse about American e-mails, the government said it had ended that particular program in 2011.

But it turns out that didn’t really stop the NSA from being able to suck data about Americans’ e-mails: Instead, the government was able to replace the key functions of that program by relying on legal methods designed to collect information information about foreigners, according to a NSA Inspector General report obtained by the New York Times via a Freedom of Information Act suit. And because those methods focused on overseas collection, or collection aimed at non-U.S. citizens, they largely had less oversight than the now-defunct domestic e-mail records program.

“This is yet another trick move in the never-ending shell game that the NSA is playing with the American people, and apparently with the secret court whose oversight it is trying to evade,” said Kevin Bankston, the director of New America’s Open Technology Institute. “New rule: if the NSA claims that a particular surveillance program has ended, or that a particular type of surveillance has halted ‘under this program,’ assume that it is still going on in another program.”

After Snowden revealed the National Security Agency was collecting data en masse about American e-mails, the government said it had ended that particular program in 2011.

But it turns out that didn’t really stop the NSA from being able to suck data about Americans’ e-mails: Instead, the government was able to replace the key functions of that program by relying on legal methods designed to collect information information about foreigners, according to a NSA Inspector General report obtained by the New York Times via a Freedom of Information Act suit. And because those methods focused on overseas collection, or collection aimed at non-U.S. citizens, they largely had less oversight than the now-defunct domestic e-mail records program.

“This is yet another trick move in the never-ending shell game that the NSA is playing with the American people, and apparently with the secret court whose oversight it is trying to evade,” said Kevin Bankston, the director of New America’s Open Technology Institute. “New rule: if the NSA claims that a particular surveillance program has ended, or that a particular type of surveillance has halted ‘under this program,’ assume that it is still going on in another program.”

We wouldn’t know what our government has done without Edward Snowden,” he said on stage at the Yahoo Digital Democracy conference in Des Moines, Iowa, today.

At the same time, he said, “There are secrets the government does have to have,” and because Snowden divulged a whole lot of those secrets, the Kentucky senator and presidential hopeful said Snowden should have to face some sort of penalty if and when he returns to the United States.

Paul was quick to add, though, that the punishment ought to be be proportionate to the penalties faced by sitting government leaders like James Clapper, the national director of intelligence who told a Senate hearing in 2013 that the US was not collecting Americans’ data—when, in fact, the National Security Administration was doing just that. Clapper has since defended himself, saying that he misspoke. But he hasn’t convinced Paul, an ardent anti-surveillance advocate, who suggested on stage, as he has in the past, that Clapper and Snowden “could share a cell together.