[grkvlt]

> We're not saying it's a police state. We're saying it is becoming one because of the very tools that these agencies possess and abuse without accountability

Right, this is my problem. I have no problem with posession of these tools. States possess much worse things, nuclear weapons spring to mind. And abuse of these tools in an unaccountable fashion is wrong, 100% with you on that. However it is not clear to me that such abuses have occurred, or are occurring in a systematic way. Are there any documented (to the extent possible) cases of this? I didn't think even the Snowden documents showed that. In fact, it looked like they were full of caveats about US and UK citizen surveillance being a problematic area, and stated requirements for legal reviews and checks in these cases?