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> "Even if you are not a citizen of the Five Eyes, you shouldn't be worried about your data being viewed unless you're involved with a group of interest, such as a foreign government or violent organization."

This really is a key quote. Even if OP's assertions about the NSA are totally correct, even if all security protocols are followed to the letter, the problem still remains that they have a tremendous amount of power that can be used to target anyone deemed an enemy of the state.

I think a lot of contention on this issue revolves around how much you trust the government to appropriately designate enemies of the state. Many people believe the government is responsible about this, and that it will only go after people who a reasonable person would consider "dangerous." The problem, of course, is that the United States doesn't exactly have the cleanest track record of appropriately focusing its wrath:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

(And yes, I know COINTELPRO was FBI, not NSA... I believe it's still an instructive example of government overreach.)

Anyone who defends the NSA on the grounds that it only targets those who are worthy of targeting needs to convince me that another COINTELPRO will never happen. I would actually welcome such an argument, since it would make me feel a whole lot better about this.

So, an interesting question is, how many people do you think believe that all COINTELPRO targest in fact were 'worthy of targetting'? For some targets, the number of people who today think they were 'worth of targetting' may be way different than the number who may have thought so at the time. (If MLK was held in as high regard 40 years ago as he is now, he would have had a lot less work to to do).

It doesn't even have to be on the level of COINTELPRO. See here:

> The history of the FBI Lab hasn't been without controversy. Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who joined the FBI in 1982 and served as a Supervisory Special Agent at the Lab from 1986 to 1998, blew the whistle on scientific misconduct at the Lab. In a subsequent investigation, it was found that evidence had been falsified, altered, or suppressed, or that FBI agents had testified falsely, in as many as 10,000 cases, resulting in many false convictions. More than a decade later, cases were still being overturned because of this massive fraud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Laboratory#Controversy

Am I going to get my Name on a List because I've said that we need to stop allowing the NSA to build more data centers? That I think that Dianne Feinstein needs to be removed from office?

Beyond the monitoring, the deeper point of Big Brother in the book "1984" was the worry about whether what you were doing made you subject to punishment. Foucault also covers this in his discussions of the panopticon, where it is one thing to have a mechanism for constant and pervasive surveillance, and quite another when the windows of surveillance are tinted so you can never know whether the collection is being aimed at you.

You have a great point, and the TL;DR of OP's entire post is "Unless you're doing something wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

Which is the slimmest argument I ever hear in favor of these pervasive civil rights violations.

I've never been a terrorist, never given any information to a foreign enemy, hell, I've barely ever even broken the law. But I do have a personal interest in Russia, speak Russian, and have been to Russia 14 times.

Am I on a list somewhere? Maybe I have done "something wrong" in the eyes of some automated, arbitrary algorithm that's connecting the dots of US citizens around the globe?

Doubt it, Russia isn't the enemy anymore, it is a country in disarray, trying to pick up the pieces after communism.

If there is anything to learn here, it is that a specific enemy is not necessary. You could get back-roomed for having said "I like Froot Loops" in a private email a decade ago. It could be /arbitrary/.

Or they could just lie.

Just like they could simply ignore the law and conspire with telecom companies to do the snooping anyways. :P

If you're going to assume that level of malice on the part of government then the game is already over.

A number of countries could be of interest, not just "the enemy".

Recall that Russian sleeper agents were arrested in the US as recently as 2010.

> Unless you're doing something wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

A nice comeback is to ask the accuser to apply similar standards as a universal principle. I mean if NSA didn't do anything wrong why worry about Snowden leaks. Or why doesn't Google show us their search algorithms?