It's also hard to make the case that it isn't, ultimately, what the people want, by "the standard you walk past is the standard you accept" principle.
It's been nearly twenty years. If Americans were deeply, deeply bothered by the government spying on them, they'd have burned down this government by now. At most charitable, this speaks to a deep ignorance or apathy in the American electorate and American citizenship. Or a general anxiety about what "the other people" are doing that exceeds their anxiety about what the government can do with panopticon surveillance.
I think, in general, hackers vastly overestimate the average human concern or sensitivity to this kind of thing.
The one that hasn't formed yet because the electorate has failed to recognize that parties only exist because they can consolidate mass political power. This is part of the "apathy" category. People don't care enough to meet up on this issue. They don't even care enough to be members of the existing parties or do more than show up to elections (and then, only between half and three-quarters for President, less for Congress, and hovering around 10-20% for primaries).
People care, but not enough to overcome institutional inertia.
> The one that hasn't formed yet because the electorate has failed to recognize that parties only exist because they can consolidate mass political power.
This is not the reason. The reason is the how the system was designed:
The Tea Party Republicans are a counter-example (or more accurately, a counterinsurgency). While there are still only two parties, one of them has become something that would be nearly unrecognizable to its members from the '70s.
It is possible to organize within the party to bend it. But in general, one side of the aisle tends to seem to have difficulty with finding enough common ground to actually work as a bloc, while the other side has managed, impressively, to unify Christian fundamentalists and ultra-rich billionaires.
> If Americans were deeply, deeply bothered by the government spying on them, they'd have burned down this government by now.
Right now stuff is happening that does deeply bothers Americans, and what do they do? They walk around with signs, they file legal papers, and maybe some other forms of peaceful, albeit useless, protest... a lot of other countries truly would be burning down the government right now if something like Elon happened there, but so far America has just been saying they don't want it, in as many ways as possible, but while still continuing to fully let it happen.
In the US it's looking like the main aggressors are Trump supporters and most of everyone else is not actually out for blood, just Peacefully Unhappy.
Elon is 100% out for blood, he's practically a modern-day Nazi.
On many social media platforms you can see a lot of people from the UK, EU, etc. being totally bewildered that all the US is doing right now is useless peaceful protests.
Maybe eventually something will happen that changes things, or maybe eventually things will reach a tipping point, but right now at least they are still stuck in some peaceful protest limbo.
