I know a guy who in maybe 2004 or 2005 was representing a client in a criminal case and had info from his private communications with the client introduced in court. The government was using en essay surveillance on those privileged attorney-client communications and drawing from them. That was well over 10 years ago. 9/11 was actually the end in terms of total surveillance. That was the end point, even though they kept it quiet so nobody realized how fucked we were.
What's funny is, even in 2013 after the Snowden revelations, most normal, intelligent people still didn't get the extreme danger of what was happening and how that meant the end of the country. Surveillance on Cohen and the president isn't remotely surprising here.
I have to agree with the guy who spams about the raid on Cohen. As a lawyer, I agree that that event marks the end officially. We already know the Fourth Amendment is gone for normies out there, but with the Cohen raid, that shit is next level as they are using those Stasi tactics to oust a president. When you take away due process and the right to counsel, and the government is searching and wiretapping lawyers as a fishing expedition to nail a defendant, that's literally Stasi when done to normies, but using it to oust a president is like the Stasi saying "look how you are powerless to stop us." And given the high tech, obviously, it's way beyond Stasi.
It's also kafka-esque because the supposed "opposition" like do-gooder legal orgs who should challenge this stuff have also been rendered completely impotent by the same surveillance and related blackmail. Orgs like the ACLU who used to at least challenge these kinds of abuses are now compelled to push the leviathan deep state agenda because they themselves were thoroughly surveiled for years and are blackmailed now. Or, let's say you want to challenge stuff on your own in court. Well, courts won't even grant you standing to challenge surveillance or will dismiss your challenge completely on national security grounds. Nor can you vote any of this away, either, since Congress, the judiciary (including the Supreme Court), and a huge body of unelected officials are blackmailed by mass surveillance and are under control of the system you are trying to challenge. In sum, there is no recourse legally, and the basic functions of the republic that used to stop this stuff with voting effectively do not exist.
In 2018, people still have the wrong impression thinking we're still a republic or that the legal system can somehow anything. No matter how it's portrayed as a republic still, it's simply not. it's total tyranny in substance. I guess fat dumb boomer normies won't take action until literal death squads are going door to door searching houses, but it will certainly be too late then.
Last, since there is no legal recourse or any constitutional check available anymore to stop any of this, rising up would not work either, because over all this time while people have done nothing, they've built up this massive military asymmetry of technology and power. It may be impossible already to resist, but certainly within a couple years, tops, given AI and various other technologies developing rapidly, it will be literally impossible to oppose the military. So, that's that.