[CurtMonash]

There was a time when the trade-off was:

1. The government lied and pretends not to engage in domestic espionage.

2. To support that lie, the government didn't do much bad stuff with the results of its domestic spying.

3. Thus, the domestic spying wasn't a big deal.

I think we're past that point now.

[jamesaguilar]

What bad stuff has the government done with the current batch of domestic spying?

[drjesusphd]

Secretly and unconstitutionally feeding evidence to local law enforcement for petty crimes. Blackmailing judges and politicians. Giving (selling?) information about US citizens to foreign countries. Spying on significant others. Industrial espionage.

That's just what we've heard about.

[knowaveragejoe]

Aside from the first one, is there any hard evidence of these? "Industrial Espionage" != spying on foreign companies with no commercial benefit, for example.

[kansface]

Individuals are also a problem: see things like spying on girlfriends and blackmail.

[CurtMonash]

First of all, the secrecy pretense has been blown.

As for the rest -- it's hard to prove what secret sources the government used to motivate which actions. But as one example:

Being on the No-Fly List is pretty bad, and a lot of people are on it.

[001sky]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

[polymatter]

= falsify evidence against individuals in specific cases to hide their methods of obtaining the real evidence.

[drjesusphd]

Wait, actual falsification? Do you have a source for that?

I always thought it was the NSA telling local cops "go bark up that tree", and they make a series of "lucky guesses" that lead to an otherwise legitimate arrest and prosectution.

[lukifer]

I agree with your core premise, but #2 is distributed extremely unevenly.