If your ex-spouse was a contractor for a government agency with access to the mass surveillance machine, would you still feel comfortable "that only a miniscule fraction of the data collected in bulk ever reaches human eyes?"
What if you were a candidate for political office, pushing opinions that angered large swaths of the Intelligence Comminity?
The "minuscule fraction" of content is not surfaced by some random roll of the dice - it's the definitionally most interesting content, in the sense that some human went specifically looking for it in the heap of content caught in the dragnet. And it only needs to be interesting to at least one person with the clearance to search for it.
Maybe that means it's a video of a child being abused, and some morally upstanding federal officer is searching for it because anyone possessing it is ethically and legally culpable for the abuse of that child... Or maybe it's a PDF containing evidence of FBI kidnapping and torturing innocent civilians, and some morally corrupt federal officer is searching for it because anyone possessing it is a liability who needs to be silenced... Or maybe it's a JSON file containing the GPS locations of an individual for the past year, and some emotionally scorned federal contractor is searching for it because that individual is their ex-spouse who's moved onto a new partner.
Are you really prepared to put your faith in the trustworthiness and moral clarity of the population of 100k+ people with federal security clearances?
