Yes and the legislature would have one less argument to enact mass surveillance if there wasn’t this “convenient” drug problem in the US. And if we had a univer

Yes and the legislature would have one less argument to enact mass surveillance if there wasn’t this “convenient” drug problem in the US. And if we had a universal healthcare system then maybe this wouldn’t be as big of a problem and politicians wouldn’t be able to use it as an excuse. Of course this wouldn’t prevent them from using other nonsense like CP to do it (see : UK), although arguably that problem could also be reduced with healthcare. These two issues are related in this case. What I’m basically saying is the government could attack the root causes of these problems but they won’t because mass surveillance benefits them in other ways such as monitoring dissidents and protecting the status quo.