Most of the people here today who were adults in 2002, post-9/11 were all happy as fucking clams when the "Patriot Act" was enacted. And honestly if you think that was when the trouble started you are stunningly misinformed.
By the late 1980's the intelligence community could easily get every form of electronic transmission emanated into air and damn near anything else. If you had/have an idea and it leaves your head, we could get it. The problem was how to sift thru the billions of useless bits and find the gold. Computers and advanced algorithms solved that fairly quickly. While computer power was doubling every six months, so was the sifting and sorting. Same goes for data storage. 35 years ago, 5 megs was an aluminum disk as big as a dinner plate or a magnetic tape. Today a terabyte fits in your pocket. Gathering all your private info and calling it "metadata" is the end of privacy. Today they can literally tell you EVERY phone call you have ever made and read you every text you ever sent. They get a rubber stamp from a party hack/judge and you are fucked. I assure you, the Patriot Act has shit to do with it. That was the end of the road, not the beginning.
By them time AOL became a thing and we all started waiting for dial-up to dial us up, your privacy and freedom were rapidly disappearing. This shit started in the 1920's and 30's when the FBI was granted powers to chase criminals across state lines and investigate shit like "Mann Act" violations to persecute black men mainly, but anyone getting laid could be a target. When people passed the RICO laws in 1970 they had no idea so much bullshit would be a RICO crime.
The laws of unintended consequences is what is getting you in trouble. People constantly fail to understand, the real enemies of Democrats are not felons, perverts, organized crime, terrorists or Russians. YOU are the enemy of socialism/Biden's and Clinton's. The political class will pass any law required to insure they stay in power and you stay in poverty. 16 months ago we witnessed the greatest fraud election in western history and no one cares. Not one covid story on the news for three weeks. Dr. Fauci disappeared like fucking Houdini and no one cares.
We are all being played.