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 dat

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.