I'm not sure we have such a clean historical record in that area. There was a huge scandal in the 80s about massive surveillance of people on the left of the political spectrum :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal
The big difference there was: It ended quite a few political careers when it came out, including federal minister Kopp's (since we have no real president that's actually the highest political chair). Switzerland has checks and balances in place that make it very risky for politicians to act contra the people's interests. In the US I can see no such outfall even after all the dirty business has come out - it all seems to be legal.