It’s not the abstraction, it’s the level of abstraction - the higher you go, the more general and the less concrete it becomes. Striking the balance is the key.

When you're entering the U.S. or Canada, you surrender your rights by default. The border agents can search all your belongings, including any of your digital device. At the border, less is more; bring less, tell less. Once they start digging, be prepared to answer a lot of questions.

It will not change anything. China is already a superpower and what do all the superpowers do? They make rules.

Not just make rules, but bend rules that are already in place to lean in towards their favor.

...and away from US's favor.

I would recommend you set up your own VPN so you fine-tune it to suit your need. However, if you can't, then choose VPN providers maintain their servers on their own network instead of renting servers from others. Checkout IPVanish: (http://www.vpntips.com/hidemyass-alternatives/#ipvanish)

EncFS over Dropbox works best for me: http://ninjatips.com/encrypt-dropbox-using-encfs/

the part scares me the most - "Free Forever"

maybe that means that they plan to sellout

I have two instances on DO. I use one purely as a VPN server so I can watch u.s. netflix etc. It is roughly 3~5 times faster than VPN subscriptions. I use the other instances as a backup server.

i guess this won't work on iphone right?

You should be able to use it with any mobile encryption app which is compatible to EncFS, e.g. Boxcryptor Classic on Android and iOS (more info: https://www.boxcryptor.com/en/classic)

how do u share a file encrypted using encfs with someone else?