> It is extremely unlikely to be only "keeping people safe".

Why do you say this? It seems you are accusing parent of making a big leap in logic and then doing the same type of leap yourself.

Do you have any evidence that they want to do more than keeping people safe?

I've worked with and talked to many who work in the DoD space and while there were some who didn't seem to understand how technology worked I never met one who didn't seem genuine in wanting to keep people safe. Sure plenty of contractors just want the money and don't give two shits either way and sure this is only anecdotal but do you have anything better?

Seems the easiest, least complex reasoning is people who are not well enough versed in the technology but have good intensions are trying to do what they think is most correct when it may not be.

There is certainly such evidence, you don't even need it really as it's literally in the mission statement of some of these intelligence agencies: they do anything that is "in the national interest". Yes, keeping people safe is clearly in the national interest, but many other things are too, hence the fact that GCHQ has spied on climate change talks, trade deals, attempted to influence online discussions, the NSA has hacked oil companies, etc. They are in no way limited to a mission of 'keeping people safe'.

This is one reason I tend to think intelligence agencies should be disbanded and their best people merged into police forces. The police have a clear and (relatively) focused mission: fight crime. Most of those criminal investigations are about keeping people safe in one form or another. Police forces aren't tasked with economic wellbeing or "cyber defence" or any of the other crap that the intelligence community has tried to take on for itslf.

Exactly. Remembering all their extra goals and schemes they've used to achieve them helps keep things in perspective. I've had success presenting it to lay people as a bait and switch showing all the crap they do then what they say. Hardliners swallowing tons of propaganda will usually disagree and back their media's claims no matter what. Yet, many people are receptive to this technique.

Bonus points if you show the risk to them personally: makes them most likely to act against it politically. :)

A logical inference.

Given:

Things like mass phone surveillance, passively breaking legitimate encryption used by non criminals, introducing vulnerabilities, and other plainly illegal behavior is being deployed against citizens

..with no recourse..

..which are answered with outright lies when challenged (c.f. Snowden, Clapper's lies before Congress)..

..and the methods are of dubious actual effectiveness when it comes to "keeping people safe"

..and they in fact reduce safety when it comes to introducing vulnerabilities which can be misused by criminals

Therefore:

The aims of said behavior is plainly not to "keep people safe", but some other alterior motive. Simple statistics show that garden variety cybercriminals are a more real threat to the average person than terrorists - so do no statisticians work for the feds, or is there a different plan we're not seeing?

Never heard of Hanlon's razor?

What is the simpler answer that you think I've overlooked? Corruption in government is not exactly a new phenomenon...

I'll take that as a no, since you've clearly confused it with Occam's.

Surely informing you that you were wrong should be sufficient to prompt you to look up what I was actually referring to. It would take all of 4 seconds. If you're not going to do even that little, rudely stop replying.

I am not saying that it is 'only' or that they are entirely guided by that motive. But if you look at that as one of their primary guidances, and assume a lack of technical knowledge in many areas by the lead principals, their actions make sense. Maybe their are ways to help them achieve their goals that have not been conventionally explored?

I am sure most politicians and intelligence people want to keep people safe, the problem is it is unlikely to be their only motivation.

Lets say we do manage to come up with an alternative that would keep people safe without requiring mass surveillance then it would not remove any of the other motivations (say business espionage). I think appealing to a technical solution for a political problem is unlikely to work, but it could be possible.