[int_19h]

> Remember how the central idea of Orwell's 1984 was that TVs in everyone's home were also watching all time and someone behind that device actually understanding what they see?

On the contrary, 1984 makes the point that such surveillance doesn't need everybody watched all the time to be effective - it just needs to convince people that the chance of them being watched at any particular moment are too high for them to exhibit any signs of dissent:

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

But yes, you're right in that for the first time in history, truly blanket surveillance of communication is within reach of many states.