This statement always shows up when discussing quantum computers. The only important 'modern cryptographic codes' dependant on factoring large primes are RSA and Diffie-Hellman.RSA has replacements waiting in the wings (notably Elliptic Curves); Diffie-Hellman might be a bit trickier to live without.But I'm not aware of any claims that the symmectric cyphers (AES, Blowfish, 3DES, etc) or the advanced hashes (SHA3? or whatever) would be vulnerable.

You should probably take into account that the few, and obviously mainly ignored, privacy protections you do have evaporate the nanosecond your communication leaves U.S. borders. Supposedly within the U.S. the NSA is limited to email metadata collection (look up the older term 'pen register' for the legal history of law enforcement access to this kind of information), but when you interact with a 'foreign agent' the sky's the limit. Ellison may have known more than we thought when he said, "You have no privacy. Get over it."

Because of OpenBSD? :)

"(Discussing our first contact with aliens) is a bit like iguanas on the Galapagos Islands sitting around trying to figure out how to treat the first human visitors. Should we offer them dead flies, or live flies? Shall we line up the flies in a row? How shall we defend ourselves? All of that is irrelevant."
                -- Seth Shostak, SETI

"In conclusion, the main thing we did wrong when designing ATM security systems in the early to mid-1980s was to worry about criminals being clever; we should rather have worried about our customers - the banks' system designers, implementers, and testers - being stupid."
                Ross Anderson, "Security Engineering"

As with anything, common sense helps. The Burning Man people have been playing around with stuff like this for years, without anyone getting hurt. But then, we tend to be pretty careful with our toys (I have a poofer that shoots 30 ft. fireballs that I've been using for ten years). A friend of mine spearheaded Dance Dance Immolation a while back, where she shot propane torches at dancers (wearing full fire suits) who missed their moves. Yes, we play with fire, but we're good at it. If anyone's interested, there are several fire art collectives in the San Francisco Bay Area, including The Crucible and the Flaming Lotus Girls, that you could contact about safety issues. The Crucible even has classes.