New Matrixism Following the 'Path of the One' to enlightenment

I sometimes wonder how much society will put up with governments spying on and interference with law abiding citizens lives.  Americans have the NSA quietly (or not so quietly in the end) working with telephone and cell phone company to track phone calls.   Australia and China seem to be doing a bang up job censoring the Internet.  Folks in England have been putting up with their every move being recorded by closed-circuit cameras.  Now they will potentially have every piece of information they send and receive on the Internet being recorded for at least a year.  

This raises an interesting question of where the balance is between a government not trusting its citizens and when the citizens can no longer trust the government.  I think that we already can't trust any government.  They've become so satiated on the power they've gained in recent years in the name of protecting the country.  They aren't going to want to give it up.  Rather I fear that they will continue to grab more and more power, ripping away the basic freedoms that once existed.  If this continues for much longer we'll all end up in countries like China, North Korea, and Iran where everything is censored, everything is controlled, and you have no choice in what you can do with your day-to-day lives.

What is it going to take to change this trend?  A revolution?  In his book Understanding Politics: Ideas, Institutions, and Issues Thomas Magstadt quotes a Harvard sociologist's claim that "for every 5 years of relative peace there was 1 year of 'significant social disturbance'".  This was a study done in the 1930s of European countries.  I guess today the question is what constitutes "relative peace" or the lack of it.  Does the war on terror break the trend of "relative peace"?  Does the war on drugs?  Does the war on gays?  Does the war on conservatives?  Does the war on anyone who doesn't think the exact same way as I do?  Perhaps we are in one long extended period of "significant social disturbance" and so social and political history no longer applies.

The trend of government control in Joe Six-Pack's life is probably going to become more intense before it gets better.  It will take some form of revolution to change things.  It may be simply a political revolution.  It may be a social revolution that bleeds over into politics and government.  It may be another World War.  What ever it is, whenever it is, it appears that we may have to do more to protect ourselves from our own governments in the mean time.  I think encrypting hard drives for personal and corporate use will become more common place (Truecrypt anyone?)  The use of privacy proxies and Tor to hide our browsing habits will become more common place.  The use of Freenet and other walled off communication and file sharing platforms may also become more common place.  All in an effort to allow ourself be free in a world and a country that is striving to let us become less free.