I feel sorry for the honest and good american people that have to suffer from this power abuse, which seems to be a very real and common threat. It must be horrible to live in constant fear from your own government. :(
Governments. The reason it's so hard to weed out this sort of thing is that the business of government is so fragmented in the US due to both geographic and historical factors. I have separate and distinct relationships with the city I live in, the county that city is in, the state, and the federal government, plus quasi-governmental organizations like some utilities providers, intergovernment groups and so on.