The state itself.

Any shred of rights or privacy has reduces it's ability and/or increases the cost of it doing what it deems worth doing.

This is a meme I see and don't fully understand. It seems to assume that the state isn't a democracy, yet the statement is usually applied to democracies like the US. Such statements don't make sense to me when it's the people who are the state, not some "other".

The state is a lecher.