While we should of course be concerned about the privacy implications these programs hold for ordinary American citizens, it's also important to think about the

While we should of course be concerned about the privacy implications these programs hold for ordinary American citizens, it's also important to think about the implications these resources have on the class of people who are most likely to be targeted: the immediate competitors and enemies of those who have access to them. While everyone's privacy is threatened by these surveillance tools, there are 300,000,000 everyones. Only a tiny subset of that pool has direct, palpable influence into the political power elite. They are the ones most likely to have this infiltration of their lives used against them. Those at the top of this informational food chain who are able to abuse it are most likely to abuse it in a way that benefits them most directly by blackmailing and otherwise undermining the influence of their competitors. In this manner it makes the consolidation and perpetuation of political power more efficient by orders of magnitude compared to those who have no access or very limited access to these surveillance programs. This is dangerously destabilizing to a democratic society. If we have no real competition for authority, there are no real checks on that authority. The US is grooming an autarch.