In 2007, Privacy International conducted a survey to determine the extent to which countries conducted surveillance on their citizens. The U.S. was in the same category as China and Russia.
Glenn Greenwald supplements this image with some stunning data:
The US operates a sprawling, unaccountable Surveillance State that – in violent breach of the core guarantees of the Fourth Amendment – monitors and records virtually everything even the most law-abiding citizens do. Just to get a flavor for how pervasive it is, recall that the Washington Post, in its 2010 three-part “Top Secret America” series, reported: “Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.”
For more on the ever-increasing U.S. surveillance state, view this excellent video by Glenn Greenwald: