The Stasi had a lot more than kilobytes of data. It also managed to be far more effective at oppressing people than institutions we know of with petabytes of data.
Everything starts out small. Some institutions in the "free west" are already quite good in oppressing people.
Today, you already must be very carefully which books you read in the public library or buy at Amazon.
Because you, yourself don't feel it, does not mean, that it does not exist.
Do you want to say, that Snowden, Manning and other Whistle blowers are not oppressed? Have you no eyes?? I guess not!!
(and this is only one small example of oppression, that everybody knows but most just ignore -- to live without disturbance -- very much like the people in former Nazi Germany).
To be clear about it: What happened to Manning alone, is a shame to any civilized society -- if he is guilty or not.
When the so called "Aluhuttraeger" where saying, that the US where spying on us, 10 or 20 years ago, everybody was laughing.
Some of those laughs have already stopped.
It is amazing, that humans can not learn from history and even not understand, what is obvious.
Making fun and telling nice stories -- how paltry.