That SHOULD be a powerful argument, too. Unfortunately, most people tend to roll their eyes when you start suggesting that the government might use such powers against them in the future.

They ultimately just "trust the government" to do the "right thing" no matter how flawed that thinking is. This is partially the fault of the education system and them not "knowing their history" that well.

It's only when such abuses of privacy happen to them personally that they become ultra-privacy activists. We've seen this even with politicians that fought to expand mass surveillance powers and then did an 180 when they saw those powers were used against them, too (who would've thought?!).