Something quite depressing is if we (HN crowd) find workarounds, most regular folks won't have the budget/expertise to do so, so citizen journalism will have been successfully muted by government / big media.
I grew up in a pretty deprived area of the UK, and we all knew "a guy" who could get you access to free cable, or shim your electric line to bypass the meter, or get you pirated CD's and VHS' and whatever.
There will always be "that guy down the pub" selling raspberry pi's with some deranged outdated firmware that runs a proxy for everything in the house or whatever. To be honest with you, I might end up being that guy for a bunch of people once I'm laid off from tech like the rest. :)
You should be worried. Don't underestimate the capabilities of the government bureaucrats. That "guys down the pub" will quickly disappear once they start getting jail time for their activities.
Somehow, things that could be unifying protests where the working class of every political stripe are able to overlook their differences and push back against government never seem to happen. It is always polarized so that it's only ever one side at a time, and the other side is against them. How does that work?
So as soon as Labour comes out for something, Cons are inclined to be against it and so on. The only way to have neutral protests is if no one visibly backs them and they don't become associated with a side, but then how do they get support and organization?