The only real solution is reverse surveillance, watch the watchers.
Government leaders and bureaucrats have to be placed under relentless scrutiny. To some degree the US political system already benefits from this (Eliot Spitzer being ousted after financial monitoring turned out to be just a hooker, not corruption), but foreign authoritarian governments do not. Remove the troublemakers before they have the ability to do things like Assad is doing in Syria now.
I saw an interesting documentary the other day about the Spitzer case, "Clinet 9", it's on Netflix. From the documentary it seems like the only reason Spitzer was caught was because several wealthy individuals had it out for him since he was rocking the boat so to speak by taking on all these powerful interests. In the grand scheme of things it's really a tragedy because he unlike anyone else was able and willing to take on corrupt financial institutions.
