Surveillance capability has advanced beyond broader public awareness and legislative controls. The gap between what can and what cannot be monitored continues to shrink. It's in the various intelligence agencies best interest to not educate the public, so they don't.
This is why recent revelations have proved so shocking. There has always been an assumption that checks and balances would prevent such fascist behavior from taking root. Instead, it's being legalized in secret courts without any public involvement. Now that behavior has been exposed, laws are being drafted to publicly legitimize what's been performed in private (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/sen-feinsteins-nsa-bil...).
All this in the name of security. In a country where the loudest politicians are publicly 'fiscally conservative', yet somehow the US still spends more on its military than the next 10 highest defense budgets combined (http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison).
This is why recent revelations have proved so shocking. There has always been an assumption that checks and balances would prevent such fascist behavior from taking root. Instead, it's being legalized in secret courts without any public involvement. Now that behavior has been exposed, laws are being drafted to publicly legitimize what's been performed in private (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/sen-feinsteins-nsa-bil...).
All this in the name of security. In a country where the loudest politicians are publicly 'fiscally conservative', yet somehow the US still spends more on its military than the next 10 highest defense budgets combined (http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison).
Where truly can the US go from here?