On March 10, 2008 the Wall Street Journal had a long piece here. detailing the growth of the National Security Agency's capacity to sweep up electronic data on people in the USA without a warrant in.order to search for suspicious patterns. About five years ago Congress shut down the FBI's Carnivore "black program" for intelligence-gathering. But the data-sifting operation didn't vanish. The National Security Agency, which once could do only foreign surveillance, built the system instead.
NSA's role in in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to dig even more broadly into data about people's communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than previously revealed domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
I propose this rule of thumb for preventing totalitarianism in any nation: Don’t build the systems for monitoring people’s daily lives closely in the first place, and you will not be at risk of totalitarian rulers using those systems to overwhelm individual choice.
I heartily recommend you read and ponder this piece.