Here is an interesting cue for how social network information can be used to control the spread of unwanted ideologies & behaviours through a population: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZNrOzgNWf4&feature=share
If anything like this was going on (and I am making no accusations; this is all speculation), then I suspect that it would work using mechanisms similar to those described in the above video.
No implausible high-technology mind control would be required, just the simple & conventional tools of the marketing/advertising/targeted-persuasion industry, directed towards a relatively small group of people, identified through the very surveillance mechanisms that have so recently been revealed to the world.
It is a pretty cool concept really, and (if we trust the people pulling the trigger), infinitely preferable to violent conflict. Better to counter the spread of hostile, dangerous and violent ideologies before there is loss of life, damage to property, economic disruption etc...
The key thing here is trust. Weirdly enough, I am normally* inclined to trust (the majority of) NSA & GCHQ staffers. My main concerns normally revolve around the proliferation of such technologies to groups and individuals with less noble aims.
* (Sometimes I get a bit depressed and cynical. At times like these I tend to reflect on the worst aspects of human nature, and the level of trust that I am capable of mustering drops in a corresponding manner).
What USA is having is the possibility of devolving into totalitarian state, but what ideology will rule it is yet to be seen IF that happens.
The moment when a drone kills US citizen on US soil without judicial oversight you will know that that danger is real. But you are still far far away from that.
What, six months? Three years? What can be done, will. It's possible it's already happened but isn't yet deemed appropriate for public knowledge. When it is, either for the intimidation factor or because it's become so widespread it can't be hidden, the copfan broadcast media will celebrate it rather than question it.
Some of that isn't new, but the ability to use vast computing resources to map behavior prediction of 300 million people to an accurate degree, is.
They no longer need your friends, family and neighbors to rat you out as a traitor (terrorist sympathizer?). They already know everything you have said, everywhere you have been, and everything you've done.
ARGUS is very new. And it's a required cornerstone of behavior control. They'll have a hard time dictating who you are, if they don't know where you are at all times.
The ideal fascist state is one of total compliance. A step forward for them would be to accomplish that with even less bloodshed, by essentially brain washing an entire culture toward a new way of thinking (war is peace, slavery is freedom). Not just empty slogans, posters, and fear, but actual belief across an entire culture.
When you look at the near complete lack of protest against the rise of the fascist state in America, you can see they're already well on their way to having accomplished that.