Well, before a few weeks ago, I couldn't really expect my government to spy on all its citizens, use secret courts to bully companies into giving them access to my data, share it with law enforcement for "parallel construction" (intelligence laundering) purposes, and lie to congress about what they were doing.
If you had told me a few decades ago that this would be the situation in the United States at the start of the 21st century, I would have laughed in your face and called you a crackpot, a lunatic, a conspiracy theorist. Absent something like losing World War III, there was no way the United States could become a totalitarian state in my lifetime.
Well, before a few weeks ago, I couldn't really expect my government to spy on all its citizens, use secret courts to bully companies into giving them access to my data, share it with law enforcement for "parallel construction" (intelligence laundering) purposes, and lie to congress about what they were doing.
If you had told me a few decades ago that this would be the situation in the United States at the start of the 21st century, I would have laughed in your face and called you a crackpot, a lunatic, a conspiracy theorist. Absent something like losing World War III, there was no way the United States could become a totalitarian state in my lifetime.
Yet here we are.