The Patriot Act essentially nullified the bill of rights, allowed indefinite detention without charges, and put power in the hands of secret people/programs answering to secret courts with secret interpretations of law. They were also grabbing people to put on torture flights. That's a police state. Unlike those that inspired it, it selectively uses its Gestapo powers against tiny segments of the country... far as we know... where most people never see it. That lets 99+% of people go through normal processes (eg courts). Then, they started connecting police-state surveillance to main, enforcement agencies with parallel construction to hide targeting methods. So, more of their opponents might be eliminated through trumped up charges on top of folks that are actually bad. The Dual State continues.
You bet 9/11 had huge effect on our political system. Went from a corrupt democracy with cops and courts that went too far sometimes, but occasionally reigned in, to a police state where folks could be kidnapped and tortured with criminal immunity on those doing it. The few times they've gotten caught on this stuff, like with the leaks, nobody running the programs did time, Congress often gave them retroactive immunity, and some were expanded. That's so bad that blackmail is about the only explanation I can come up with at this point for how they're behaving. Surveillance programs make that easier to do, too, esp if running in black programs. J. Edgar Hoover situation possibly repeating but with wider net.
I just don't see how that's categorically different from COINTELPRO (which murdered people with impunity), ECHELON, etc. Even the FISA courts were established 23 years before 2001, and in 2017 there were actually fewer FISA warrant requests approved than in 2000. Who got busted for this stuff before 2001?
COINTELPRO was a program in one, government group acting rogue from a long time ago that got shutdown. The current activities involve every branch of executive government with Congress's blessing.
ECHELON was an unlawful surveillance program that intercepted satellite/radio traffic with a focus on foreign personnel. Patriot Act allowed surveillance of Americans on all mediums with financial penalties or imprisonment for non-compliance with backdoors (see Core Secrets where FBI "compels" companies to "SIGINT-enable" products).
NSA management used to limit what was collected on Americans specifically to avoid trouble with Congress and FISA courts. After 9/11 and Patriot Act, they were told 9/11 couldn't happen again. They're maximizing what they collect on Americans with more cooperation between them and organizations that imprison Americans.
The differences between the isolated cases you pulled out of decades of government and the total, officially-blessed elimination of our rights today is difference between day and night. Hell, a good chunk of America votes in favor of what's in the Patriot Act. They're willing to give up their freedoms for false claims by NSA etc that they'll stop terrorists. I'd have never seen it coming back in school after reading on all the progress activists made before that time.
Also reminds me of The Siege. Mainly, the fact that they'd declare a state of emergency that suspends the bill of rights due to terrorist actions in New York. Which they did. They renew the state of emergency annually, which keeps specific executive orders going.
EDIT: I don't have my old write-up on CoG. The link below which was in top of Google has a lot of the same info, though. I haven't fully vetted this source so obviously fact-check anything on there.
You bet 9/11 had huge effect on our political system. Went from a corrupt democracy with cops and courts that went too far sometimes, but occasionally reigned in, to a police state where folks could be kidnapped and tortured with criminal immunity on those doing it. The few times they've gotten caught on this stuff, like with the leaks, nobody running the programs did time, Congress often gave them retroactive immunity, and some were expanded. That's so bad that blackmail is about the only explanation I can come up with at this point for how they're behaving. Surveillance programs make that easier to do, too, esp if running in black programs. J. Edgar Hoover situation possibly repeating but with wider net.