It's not so much that governments have less control over us, but rather that technology has enabled them to be more discreet about it. If you've ever read up on the history of intelligence gathering, psyops and unethical experimentation in the U.S., you'd be shocked by how much civil rights have been violated throughout history, even in the supposed land of the free. However, the old adage holds true: out of sight, out of mind.<p>It's true that in general we have more liberties now than ever, but it's on the surface. The trade-off is that behind the scenes, you're worse now than ever.<p>As for technology enabling Snowden to leak more than he could have without digital methods, that's correct. The Pentagon Papers were still relatively large, though. 7,000 pages out of over 20,000 source material, IIRC.<p>Your example of the public uncovering a photo manipulation isn't really all that impressive, though. Just one propaganda piece dismantled, but it's not like things like this haven't been exposed before the advent of widespread digital photo manipulation. At best, the public may have a better eye for such deception, but in the long run these are all trivial issues anyway.<p>Sousveillance is an excellent thing, but ostensibly it has no major effect on police conduct. Simply having citizens film officers is not a deterrent, since the police as an institution are fundamentally overpowered and not given enough oversight. They're state auxiliaries. It doesn't faze them.<p>Widespread cryptography is a great thing, but at the moment it's inaccessible to most people and an arms race. Things will improve in the near future, but how practical will it be at deflecting bulk surveillance states is beyond the breadth of this post.<p>On your last point, you're right about the Church Commission publicly exposing NSA and FBI malice. But ultimately, the only effect it had was some formal legislation that essentially did not hinder the agencies from performing clandestine and unlawful operations any bit. This is your fatal error in reasoning. You're expecting some surface legislative reform to solve much deeper structural issues. Remember <i>Total Information Awareness</i> and how scandalous it was in 2003? Did public outcry end it? Ostensibly it did, but in reality the agencies just learned to practice better OPSEC and moved to the same goal, but under different names, and more modularized.<p>Can we avoid a surveillance state dystopia? Maybe. But probably not with your solutions.