Consider: prior to the telephone, to monitor a conversation government had to actually send people to where the conversation happened, and that meant that they

Consider: prior to the telephone, to monitor a conversation government had to actually send people to where the conversation happened, and that meant that they could barely monitor any conversations - and yet society continued to function. The government still can send people to watch people use their phones or computers. On the other hand, it seems hard to dispute that all our most efficient examples of totalitarian states are post-telephone.