The internet can be used by smart bad guys, too. Think of this as you pour your heart out politically and psychologically and sociologically and economically:
The power of technology from a government's perspective is to have the subjects of your suspicion (citizenry) freely and enthusiastically enter all their beliefs (micro/macro blogging), the topology of their personal relations (social networking sites), and their personal communications (gmail) into the databases of private corporations for the easy mining of the data by the keepers of all the keys (NSA, MI5, and others).
Then is is a simple matter to assemble an n-dimensional database of relationships into a large net. Then they need only to pull a single knot (a person) of this net and see all others strings and knots which are pulled also.
With this tool the government can intercept and neutralize any waxing movement, meme, or influential person.
A little present from the police scanner analogue...