Technology

The process is broken if the people you rely on suck. It is inevitable that someone, in a form or another, will be representative of the group of people you are part of (may it be a dictator, an influential priest, or an elected representative); we have the luxury of living in (somewhat?) democratic countries. The way out of surveillance misuse is making (or forcing) our politicians pass laws that restrict what companies or agencies can do with our data, or how they can use them. I think spreading awareness about this topic is the most effective way to push these kind of rules in effect.

While individualistic "guerrilla privacy" might be effective for yourself, it's like a band-aid on a broken bone. If 99% of the people around you don't care about it, or simply are unaware (family, neighbours, friends), you will join the surveillance system no matter what: from a family member uploading your details to meta, to a stranger taking a picture with you in it and posting it, to your neighbors ring camera, to your friend's iPhone constantly scanning the surroundings to report nearby devices (your phone, for instance) to "improve location data".

If there is no laws that prevent evil actors from misusing this power, really little changes in the bigger picture by you using signal or protonmail (while you should do it, don't get me wrong).

EDIT: i know this will be controversial, but to me this is a good metaphor for it: the world is slowly getting hotter due to companies just caring about profits and politicians passing no laws to reverse the process, while instead actually taking bribes from those companies to not do anything about it (look, look, it's the same duo again) and your solution is... You dig an underground bunker to survive the next heatwave/hurricane.