Isn’t it the case here in the USA that all companies providing encryption software are required by law to provide a key to law enforcement agencies? I seem to recall reading that at some point. If true, I would imagine that encryption would still be quite useful for protection from industrial espionage, but it seems of limited use against Government snooping.
Pretty sure you are right about that, under PGP (Pretty Good Privacy Standards). Not an expert. But then one can write one’s own encryption.
Yes, geeky. But then I likes my privacy.
Use the old fashioned method of pencil/paper transposition or substition cypher then computer encrypt. Do some research on how to use a “one time pad” in addition to the computer crypto-program.