The situation where governments can’t (bulk) intercept communications describes basically our entire history, with as small weird exception towards the end. Prior to the invention of the postal service, most communications were verbal and privacy was (relatively) easy to ensure. Even up until very recently, communications interception required some extraordinary action like placing a durable wiretap on a line and listening to verbal communications, or else laboriously steaming open mail. It’s only in the last fifteen years that we moved the bulk of our private, non-business communications onto electronic media that have long-term centralized storage and processing power to scan them. Coincidentally that’s almost as long as encrypted messaging has been popular.
For bulk interception, it's true that a certain technical capacity is there that didn't use to be there. But targeted taps and intercepts, though expensive, used to be more straightforward in terms of process.
> Prior to the invention of the postal service, most communications were verbal and privacy was (relatively) easy to ensure.
? Messenger service seems about as old as the written word.
> But targeted taps and intercepts, though expensive, used to be more straightforward in terms of process.
Targeted taps and phone calls don't scale. Even police states that wanted to surveil their entire population could only directly monitor a small portion of the population at any time. These barriers no longer exist.
> Messenger service seems about as old as the written word.
Widespread literacy is a 19th/20th century invention. The telephone and telegraph became popular for non-essential communications only in the 20th century. Asynchronous "store and forward" electronic communications became a primary channel for communications (as in, nearly everyone in your family uses it in place of phone calls and paper letters, or even private conversations) only in the 2000s.
