Citizenship in the Empire

After the last few days of revelations regarding our national security apparatus, I think I know how Romans, Bonapartists and Soviets probably felt as their empires went into overdrive to deprive them of the rights they thought they had won in their respective revolutions.  It seems that the common denominator among these authoritarian regimes in their latter years was fear of and disrespect for the common man.  The gathering of information on people was for the purpose of intimidation and disassociation of the citizen from the other like minded people.  If everyone is looking over their shoulder all the time, there is little trust in your fellow man.  This atomization of the commonwealth makes control easier.  Coupled with the doctrine of permanent war, people are passively and actively discouraged from excercising the oversight every democratic government must have.  Don't worry, we know what needs to be done in your name is a recipe for disaster.  When a mid level private contractor apparachik feels a pang of conscience and exposes a system most of us believed was in place already, the collective yawn should be deeply disquieting.  As we go further down the road traveled by these earlier empires, the increasing irrelevance of our democratic institutions will become more apparent.  Our representatives abdicated their role in the aftermath of 9/11 and many of them feel this is a natural progression.  Even the faux outrage is muted.  It is a depressingly Orwellian turn of events.