I didn't downvote you, because I think your heart is in the right place. But this statement:
"...Well, this kind of thing was nearly impossible before our government created the Internet..."
really does betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the technologies that were around before the internet. The government really has had this power for quite a while. In fact, the only difference now... is that people give the government pictures of themselves to match faces to the phone conversations. And, of course, continuous position data... as opposed to the sort of discrete position data you could get in the 70's and 80's.
Well, I am not a surveillance expert by any possible stretch of the imagination. That said, I seriously doubt governments could access the kind of personal data (behavioral and otherwise) they can today back in the 70's and 80's. sure, if they targeted someone they could follow their life and gather lots of data. That required devoting people to follow, watch, study and record a persons every action. Today things are quite different. A "recording" of everyone's actions is being made every minute of every day. When someone becomes a government target they can virtually rewind the last n years and learn everything about them with nearly zero human cost in relative terms.
"...Well, this kind of thing was nearly impossible before our government created the Internet..."
really does betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the technologies that were around before the internet. The government really has had this power for quite a while. In fact, the only difference now... is that people give the government pictures of themselves to match faces to the phone conversations. And, of course, continuous position data... as opposed to the sort of discrete position data you could get in the 70's and 80's.