It is the over-reaction to 911. The 3-letter agencies were all traumatized by not knowing in advance that they pushed every single anti-privacy initiative possible. Like the PATRIOT ACT which was already written when 911 happened.

The current administration has shown that they use all these recording stuffs in order to persecute their political enemies.

That is in fact a matter that is subject to serious debate.

Pretext.

Also, it lays the groundwork to absolutely crush dissent in the future .

When I look at something these days I ask the question "On the whole does this benefit society?"

Society here been scale specific, so local community, wider community, population of my country, population of the world.

I.e. bin policies changes by my local council aren't going to affect someone in Africa and so on.

Depressingly the answer is almost always in aggregate... No.

We seem to be determined to allow the worst of us to make things worse for us to their own benefit.

it is explicitly meant to do this -- that's the point of marketing and propaganda.

marketing exists to change consumer behavior. what do you think google or facebook intended to do w/ all of the data it's slurping up?

if they could beam a laser at your head to do full on mind control they would, and would auction off timeshare of the lasers to the highest bidder. failing that, they have to use more subtle methods