When I was a kid, the Soviet Union was declared bad _because_ it did these things. So it's hard for some of us to shift from a mindset that it was bad on its face as proven by the Soviet Union, to that it's only bad if it's done by a bad state. I mean, right or wrong, this is the conditioning society gave us at the time. I happen to think it was right. I don't really care about their reasons, no legitimate process operating under the principle of limited government and consent of the govern gives it the power to collect extensive data about the private lives of citizens without some kind of cause to believe the citizen is engaged in wrongdoing.
I agree that they don't have the right to do this, I just don't think it amounts to tyranny. The Soviet Union was a police state because the national security apparatus was used not just for national security, but also for mercilessly squashing political dissent. A policy enforced with an iron fist by unelected oligarchs.
As an analogy, consider how Americans view gun ownership in relation to gun crime as opposed how Europeans might view it. Crime is the telltale of a criminal, not having a gun.
