Domestic mass surveillance might feel tolerable when you live in the country conducting it. But how would you feel about other countries adopting similar policies, and thereby mass-surveilling the American people? Because that's exactly what these policies authorize when applied to the rest of the world.
The bad news for American people is that "others" are pretty good at these technologies. When I read an important AI paper chances are all the names on it are non-American, even for papers from American labs. In a real war, this becomes problematic. Every nation has some bias but I think Americans have power poisoning for being the dominant power for so long. They think they are entitled to do anything and believe th…
We are lucky that they never went full Roman Empire on us. That's only due to their own restraint. We may see them falter increasingly often as their economic power gets eroded by other nations. Just look at Venezuela.