Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scale. 40, or even 20 years ago, the State might have been able to note a record of phone calls, postal correspondence (look up "postal covers"), some financial purchases, periodicals subscriptions, and with a great deal of effort, some of my travels and movements, mostly limited to specific port entries and exits, and air travel. But unavailable would have been: dictionary queries, encyclopedia queries, books read,…
Sorry to go off on one irrelevant point but I feel it is highly important to say this at every opportunity: states don't have rights. It is an absurdity and a mockery of human rights to claim such a concept and legitimize fiefdoms over real people. So called rights in their case would be entitlement to powers for power's sake. Anyway to get to your main body I agree and note what makes the scale bad ultimately is abu…
The notion of innate human rights is a collective claim on rights. It is not the only mechanism for claims to rights.
States' levels of effective control, and hence, access to rights, vary greatly, from near-absolute to wholly impotent.
This approach is based on rights as a pragmatic reality, not a moral ideal.