The only way to prevent tragic abuses of power is to be proactive. We cannot wait for abuses to occur, we must be constantly vigilant in recognizing potential abuses and stopping them before they occur (just imagine how effective network security would be if it were entirely reactive instead of proactive).

The world got a wake-up call with the Snowden revelations. But anyone with some technical know-how and foresight knew much of what he revealed was happening already (although I'm sure even the most forward thinking technologist was surprised at some of the revelations). I would hope the era of "but where's the proof" would be over when it comes to protecting ourselves from oppressive surveillance powers.

The only way to secure this country from domestic enemies in perpetuity is to make sure such detrimental abuses cannot occur, ever. Waiting until proof is revealed is far too late. And absolutely never trust anyone with unchecked power.

Your argument is also brain-dead in that the amount of information available was minuscule compared to now (thus avenues for abuse and relevant information was proportionately minuscule). The fact that it didn't happen in the era of the largest (known) abuses says absolutely nothing about the likelihood of it happening going forward.

And if you string together conspiracies without a shred of evidence to support them, you are by definition making shit up whole cloth. This puts you in the same irrational company as Alex Jones, Art Bell, etc , etc.

The existence of bad actors absolutely does not mean that we abandon all critical thinking and logic and rationality. There is precisely as much evidence that the NSA is blackmailing presidential candidates as there is evidence that there is a camera in my underwear drawer or that chemtrails exist.

Rationality is not equivalent to empiricism, as you seem to be implying.

>There is precisely as much evidence that the NSA is blackmailing presidential candidates as there is evidence that there is a camera in my underwear drawer or that chemtrails exist.

But the plausibility of the two are incomparable. Given what we know about human nature and the information available, and the abuses already made public, it is a legitimate fear. This combined with the immense gravity of such abuses, a rational consideration of the facts indicates that we take proactive measures to prevent it.

You say chemtrails are implausible? We already know that the TLA's have experimented with mind control agents, ala MKULTRA (though under different circumstances) and probably other still-secret programs, so using the rubric you just described, chemtrails are also a legitimate fear.

When it comes to chemtrails, a whole string of highly improbable assumptions are necessary for it to be true. The probability of these two cases are not comparable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding

The only reason the US doesn't use weather modification in war is because of signed international treaties.

Clearly, but the fact they infuriate you doesn't change my rebuttal of the OP's point. Which you still haven't addressed, short of telling me how it infuriates you. I understand you're infuriated.

"The investigation of Spitzer was reportedly initiated after North Fork Bank reported suspicious transactions to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network as required by the Bank Secrecy Act, which was enhanced by Patriot Act provisions, enacted to combat terrorist activity such as money-laundering."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer_prostitution_scan...

When the law was "enacted to combat terrorist activity", how do you prevent it from being turned on any crime?

I'm not actually worried about MY presidential campaign. But if there is a close race, there is always the "we have the candidates ebay/amazon browsing history from 2009" or "those text messages he/she sent to their secretary" option that could dramatically change history.

The potential for abuse is too great to not have limits on data-retention.

The problem is we cannot be sure exactly when it has been abused. It's only fair to presume our our corrupt system does not use the NSA ethically.