Fully agree. This idea that "individuals arent spied on in America" is absurdly naive and ignorant of seemingly common knowledge of past events. Furthermore it's kind of implicitly supremacist - "only those foreigners do that sort of thing".

Police regularly bust young Chinese for marijuana possession by reading their chat messages. And we are just as human and no more special than the Chinese.

A friend of mine was taken into an unmarked van and questioned after some tweets he made while at an Occupy Wall Street protest. The motives absolutely exist in the US.