Our current computing and internet facilities requires a ton of assuming that no one is out to destroy the services. And a lot of faith that they aren't really out to get you.
Govern-cements already do man-in-the-middle attacks. They have black boxes hooked into the central fiber hubs of the internet. And yes, they are black.
What is interesting is how much the govern-cement starts going insane when they hear the word privacy. I guess it is like an itch they can't scratch. So, so much effort and money go into making sure that private isn't private to them. And they are sooooo sure that there are people out there that are out to get them, and they have to stop them at any cost. ANY... COST...
Imagine the (imaginary) country of Liberland does away with spies by putting everything as a open source file. How much that would drive the Cocain Import Agency nuts. Those Liberlandians must be hiding all the important documents from us! We must infiltrate that country and find that information.