As the author notes, we've tread this ground before when J. Edgar Hoover essentially ran the country via intimidation/blackmail for decades. It always shocks me

As the author notes, we've tread this ground before when J. Edgar Hoover essentially ran the country via intimidation/blackmail for decades. It always shocks me that Hoover's reign is mentioned so lightly. Democracy wasn't functioning during those decades because one unelected individual had hugely outsized power. NSA surveillance is a backdoor to democracy because it enables blackmailing of politicians or inconvenient people. The CIA does this all the time abroad using information the NSA gathered.