Corporations are part of the checks and balances as well. Most of the opposition to SOPA/PIPA came from the tech industry, they've united to fight the FBI decryption challenge, and they started encrypting everything in response to the NSA revelations. On the flip side, the FTC is continually butting heads with Google over what are acceptable advertising statutes, human rights groups love to expose Apple's use of sweatshops, and European governments are big advocates of privacy.

The genius of democratic capitalism is that it's managed to harness the natural desire of sociopaths to fuck each other over to ensure that life doesn't get too miserable for ordinary people. The unfortunate part is that you pretty much have to become a sociopath to enter the class that gets to decide who gets fucked. But I'd much rather have this than every other social system, where the sociopaths fuck over the common people unchecked.