In other words, you have to prove that the harms of surveillance outweigh the nebulous sense of protection an average person already has regarding survillance.

It's trivial to come up with examples of how survillance is good for an average person in regular life - - see public camera catching criminals, dash cams, etc.

Fortunately we don't have to look to that. More than once the public road surveillance cameras have aided my decision to work from home. They have also helped me decided to take/not take an alternate route around bad traffic.

Those are real benefits to surveillance that help me. I understand your worries, and they are real. However there are also benefits that you cannot discard.

This is a big part of the difference between traffic cameras and unchecked surveillance of individuals.

Similarly, you could ask anyone who experienced life (or had a relative who did) in the Soviet Union or East Germany under the thumb of those overwhelming surveillance networks.

Finally, to prematurely head off an objection you might have: are these events (Nazi, Soviet, East Germany) outliers? Yes. Does that disqualify them? No. [0]

[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/31/terrorists-vs-chairs-an...

Imagine if the party in power used state surveillance to monitor their opponent and the people who support them. The whole infrastructure is turn-key authoritarian, there's literally nothing logistical stopping this, only a handshake agreement not to.

This should concern people regardless of their political affiliation or party loyalty.

Whether the renewal to continue spying into early 2017 was (figuratively) warranted is debatable, but with the official reasoning largely classified, the public may never know.

Before anyone grabs a pitchfork, focus on the issue at hand and not the current politics. Doesn't matter who's in the White House - friend or foe, would you want them to have this power?

But for the bigger issue, yes it is a thing that needs to be controlled.

Circumstantially, I think strong evidence that this happened is the Trump team's behavior after he was briefed by the NSA director, Admiral Rogers. The day after their confidential meeting, all relevant activities were immediately moved out of Trump Tower.

Anyway, this is off-topic and is a testy topic as it is so I apologize for the tangent. On topic I agree it shouldn't be possible for anyone to do this, no matter their politics.

[0] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-yes-congress-ha...

In other parts of society, there's a tradeoff behind what's good for society and what's good for individual freedoms.

Some people (say) don't want mandatory health insurance or helmet laws or whatever because they think freedom to choose is paramount. Others think it's insane that you'd EVER be opposed to something that might save even one life (what about the children??)

Sometimes these arguments are couched in terms of personal responsibility, the nanny state training us to rely on it and creating worse overall outcomes, etc etc.

It started with the war on drugs and is now the war on terror.

One big catastrophic terrorist attack perpetrated via computer networks and the internet will be all it takes to wipe out any vestige we have left of privacy and anonymity. Could easily see TOR and the like being outlawed worldwide.

Give her 1984 to read.

I think it's as Thomas Jefferson said: "...all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Perhaps in this case, the suffering is not great and the vision of privacy is not strongly supported. But I disagree that people will choose safety over freedom every time.

Freedom leads to the most security. If you scatter plot graph "free countries" and "safe countries" you'll find an unmistakable positive correlation. Whether the dangers are religious police kidnapping people for "virginity tests," people being disappeared for criticizing the government, or routine industrial accidents in places where expendable people aren't free to demand workers rights, a lack of freedom increases danger.

You're pretty safe in Switzerland, not so much in Iraq.

In one public demo, jaywalkers in a city intersection had their personal details appear on a giant screen.[2]

[1] https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/947649480123285505 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShXKvo6xl6U

I really wonder how much changing demographics (population aging) account for the shifts in public opinion on issues like this.

People who never experienced large scale oppression, eastern Europe pre nineties for example, will have a hard time grasping the repercussions.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/politics/paul-manafort-governm...

Yes, a pile of articles, stating without proof, the same thing, all coming out at the same time .. almost as if they were coordinated. When specific facts of said articles are proven to be incorrect, small retractions that never make the news cycle are issued.

  > the only reason his "associates" were caught up in 
  > surveillance reports is because they called criminals 
  > who were already under surveillance. It's like if the 
  > FBI is wire-tapping Al Capone, and you called Al Capone. 
  > Sure, you'd get listened to, but they aren't tapping YOU.

There are supposed to be legal barriers, and renewing this law continues to reject what we're supposed to have in place, for everyone.