I wonder if public outrage spikes along with the government acts of chilling speech and throttling information. I would love to see a graph with the government acts on one line and public outrage to those acts on another, I’ll be there would a surprising disparity.
My bet is that there are other factors more important to public outrage over these acts than the acts themselves. The fickle nature of the mass public means a popular government has a much easier time extracting liberties, especially if they are perceived to keep the trains running on time. Thankfully the founders knew this and created a system so slow moving and deliberate that this fickle nature is checked and even the most popular government would have a difficult (but not impossible) go at stripping Constitutional protections.