[sneak]

I really wish the idea pushed that bulk collection allows the military intelligence orgs to blackmail every single member of the executive and judicial branch: every federal judge's extramarital affair, every congressperson' drug habit or undisclosed political ties, every bribe- none of the counter forces of checks and balances apply anymore.

It's not about your dick pics. It's about the district court's inbox's underage titty pics.

The only people who can stop it are also subject to its destructive impact.

[amyjess]

J. Edgar Hoover did this back in the '60s.

This is nothing new, doesn't require modern technology, and doesn't even require mass surveillance (Hoover targeted specific individuals for gathering blackmail material).

[Lawtonfogle]

It isn't even about that. It is that the completely clean guy who is standing for integrity who gets told 'either you do as we say or we will convince the world you are a child molester, and trust us, we can plant all the evidence we want where ever we need to'.

[XorNot]

Which has nothing to do with surveillance.

If you're going to flat out lie and make stuff up then you quite literally do not need to do any surveillance.

John Kerry's war record being tarnished was done openly, publicly, and without any involvement of the NSA (which would have been useless to the cause anyway).

[LLWM]

That's not an argument against mass surveillance. Collecting evidence you are a child molestor, aka lying and saying you did, only requires targeted surveillance.