The US government and other Western governments have outsourced illegal surveillance to foreign intelligence partners, outsourced illegal military operations to private contractors(many wars all over the world that never end), and outsourced censorship to big tech partners.
This gets around any 1st ammendment issues and other ammendment issues. Gets around "not having a standing army"(but muh founding fathers and muh constituion!).
Governments will ALWAYS behave like water, they will flow around blockages and dams meant to keep them in check. Checks and balances of the US constituion are just written on a piece of paper, not enforced by anyone really. This is why I am for decentralization and you should be doing everything you can to stop relying on anything to do with the government or other major monopolies. We peacefully push away from them and do what we can to vote in anyone who will decentralize(which isn't many people sadly).