&gt; I don&#x27;t think most arguments against surveillance are necessarily implying that it is the reason that dictators rise, but instead it is one of many tools used to allow it to happen.<p>But that&#x27;s what the quote from the post is claiming.<p>&gt; Furthermore, the fact that billions of people are voluntarily using social media, all stored on private company&#x27;s cloud servers, along with ML, massive computing increases gives those who&#x27;d use surveillance for power grabs exponentially more power than the Stasi, KGB, Hoover&#x27;s FBI, etc. could have ever dreamed of.<p>No, Hoover wouldn&#x27;t. When you compare Hoover&#x27;s era to today, compare how easier it is to track paper letters and phone calls than email and skype, and more importantly, how much more of emails and skype calls do we have now than then. The only thing that have gotten easier is to bulk process them, yes. But if you actually want to tap communications of certain individuals for some legitimate reasons (and I think we all can agree that in the most corrupt and awful country, there are some situations where these legitimate reasons exist), you would need much more man-hours and effort to do that.