As a Austrian living in Germany I think we should always keep in mind what our policies and data collections could be used for by the next fascist dictator. Democracy is the art of bringing various qualities together: it should be possible for the people to change who is in power without a revolution if they want to do so; at the same time it should be incredibly hard to get rid of democracy in a legal way or to abuse it in a way that hurts minorities in a nation.

This is a question of resiliance — how good will your system cope when the executive is trying to get rid of democratic principles?

I think nearly none of the modern democracies is perfect in terms of systemic rules and procedures when it comes to resilience. In both the UK and the US you see the institutions struggling and in their struggle the fault lines become visible. Maybe I am just overly cautious or alarmist, but it is incredibly hard (and potentially bloody) to get democracy back once it is gone.

A good system of societal rules increases individual freedoms instead of decreasing them. A bit like roads force you to take certain paths (thus decreasing your freedom), but enable more vehicles to take that path and do so with higher comfort and speed (thus greatly increasing the freedom).

Overregulation can of course negatively impact freedom, but so can underregulation or the inability to enforce rules.

By the time it is implemented things have already gone horribly wrong.