Give me an example of Americans who have been materially harmed by those agencies? And what was the damage?
Have Americans been oppressed, slandered for political gain, wrongly imprisoned, illegally targeted by police because of NSA activity?
I think it's doubtful for anything other than a few incidents; the proportionality of these tradeoffs does matter as these agencies do actually go after bad people. Like people selling sanctioned gear to Russia, money laundering, sex trafficking, etc. you know - 'bad things'.
I don't see professors disappearing because they said something on campus Biden didn't like.
Naively, one might say "ah but that ended in 1971!" - but let me put it this way: if you spotted a cockroach in your house, you'd be a fool to think that was the only one.
Also: the oversight/limits you're protected by could disappear some day, they're imaginary and socially constructed. Sure, you trust our current government to handle these powers responsibly, (though you really shouldn't, see above), but why are you so confident you can trust _tomorrow's_ government?
This is the straw man of all straw mans.
You could have a Totalitarian Overlord someday, after all it's all 'socially constructed'. You'd have a million other, worse problems on your hands.
That your making that argument and can't provide examples of specific harm despite widespread powers of the state is problematic.
Creeping authoritarianism is a general problem, not an NSA problem.
# Covert & 'illegal' projects by FBI aimed at infiltrating, influencing, disrupting, and discrediting various political organizations
# Existence of the program was discovered after activists stole documents from an FBI office and leaked them to media
# Targets included: antiwar activists, feminist organizations, civil rights activists (ie MLK), environmentalists, animal rights activists, communist party, KKK, American Indian activists, far right groups
# Methods included:
* Breaking into homes, violent beatings, vandalism
* Assassination
* Smear campaigns
* Fabricating evidence, false testimony (leading to wrongful imprisonment and activist intimidation)
* Fabricating letters to discredit/humiliate people or erode their relationships, or cause conflict (leading to death in many cases)
I don't actually need to talk about hypotheticals, the US government has already abused these things to squish people or ideas it didn't like. The point about creeping authoritarianism is a secondary argument. My point is that sometimes it's better for certain tools/institutions not to exist at all.
I think we ought to treat surveillance technologies with the same type of reverence we treat nuclear tech (though maybe not to the same magnitude). Nuclear technology isn't intrinsically a bad thing: the problem is that, combined with human tendencies (tribalism, territorialism, etc), a conflict that previously would've resulted in a mere x deaths could now result in x^y deaths, or even total annihilation.
You agree that creeping authoritarianism is a general problem. Do you think it might just be in the nature of human societies? If so, wouldn't it be prudent to carefully consider what tools and institutions we leave lying around, in case the worst happens? We all accept this with nukes - there was some kind of effort at nuclear disarmament (though not enough). We should do the same for surveillance.
I'm only trying to convince you that we need to be very cautious, skeptical, and distrustful of things like the NSA, because the US govt cannot be trusted with it now, and it might get even worse in the future. What hypothetical evidence would someone have to show you, to change your mind?
~ Senator Chuck Schumer on why publicly criticizing the intelligence community is a poor choice for a politician
These people are usually naively driven by some kind of decontextualized political mindset, where the equate the arbitrary actions of some state far away, in same context as local governance, and a big dose of ultra liberal (classical) utopianism.
'The NSA is like Xi because they can spy on me'.
It's like saying 'Biden is as bad as Xi because ultimately the Police in the USA could arrest me and put me in prison for 70 years'.
It's barely theoretically true and it makes little sense to compare systems that have oversight and independent judiciary with those controlled by a Dictator.
It's good that the US has the ability to know which Russian stooges are giving money to would-be US presidents, or heading his presidential campaign. And good that the US can trace large sums of money floating out of FTX's Bahamian bank account into the hands of whoever, especially politicians.
If a student protester dissappears in the night because they made an online post critical of the governor - well, all of us will hear about it a few hours later.
