It looks to me like the US agencies, and the Five Eyes in general, are capable people who are just doing their jobs. They aren't bothering me and I'm not bothering them. The past actions of the US government or hypothetical scenarios based on historical examples just aren't very convincing. Anything could happen. But I'm not going to concern myself with it until I see some evidence.
I'm not making that mistake. I fully realize that the US government is comprised of many arms that even though some of those arms might have our collective best interests at heart this may not be the case for all of it.
> We're talking about hundreds or thousands of individuals spanning multiple generations.
So what. That only increases the chances of abuse, it does not diminish them at all. Just like in Nazi Germany there were plenty of people still fighting the good fight and at the same time employed by government. No government will ever be 100% rotten. But it does not have to be like that to do damage.
> I'm not going to worry about government metadata collection because of something that happened during the Eisenhower administration.
Because, let me guess that was too long ago and now it's different?
> Each person and group of people should be evaluated based on their own behavior and merits, not the reputation of the organization that they are affiliated with.
This is where you're flat-out wrong. Governments (and big corporations) have a life-span much longer than that of the individuals that are making it up, and as such we should look at them as entities rather than as collections of individuals.
If you'd be right then North Korea would not exist today as we know it (and neither would China, Iran and a bunch of other countries). The way these things work is that the general course will be slightly affected by the individuals but the momentum in the whole machinery is enormous. Think of it as a cable in which individual strands are replaced but the identity and purpose of the cable remains. Eventually you have a completely new cable and yet, nothing has changed. And in this case the entity has a huge influence on which parts of it will be replaced by who.
> It looks to me like the US agencies, and the Five Eyes in general, are capable people who are just doing their jobs.
That's a very very scary thing to say. "Just doing my job" has been used time and again historically to distance oneself from the responsibility taken when performing certain actions. Just doing your job is not the standard that needs to be met.
> They aren't bothering me and I'm not bothering them.
And most likely they never will.
"The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing"
> The past actions of the US government or hypothetical scenarios based on historical examples just aren't very convincing.
Of course they aren't. After all, it's not you that is personally inconvenienced in any way.
> Anything could happen. But I'm not going to concern myself with it until I see some evidence.
And none that will convince you will ever come. Because if it did it would be too late for you to change your stance anyway.
It's also quite foolish to try to evaluate people in a vacuum... would you extend the same privilege to a member of a criminal gang or jihadi group? No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig...
https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
"Campaigns operated by JTRIG have broadly fallen into two categories; cyber attacks and propaganda efforts. The propaganda efforts (named "Online Covert Action"[4]) utilize "mass messaging" and the “pushing [of] stories” via the medium of Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube.[2] Online “false flag” operations are also used by JTRIG against targets.[2] JTRIG have also changed photographs on social media sites, as well as emailing and texting work colleagues and neighbours with "unsavory information" about the targeted individual.[2]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEXINT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_Nerve_%28GCHQ%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%...
There's your evidence-- it's been here all along. These programs are targeted at US citizens, some with the explicit aim of discrediting them, blackmailing them, or propagandizing them. These are not the actions of a friendly nanny state but rather a malevolent surveillance state.
So, you are drinking battery acid until you see evidence that it's not good for you?
Or do you maybe take the evidence of other people's experience into account?
If so, how about you take into account the evidence of hundreds of societies that have dealt with massive surveillance (where "massive" still was "almost none" in comparison to today's and tomorrow's technical possibilities) and with oppression (those two empirically tend to go hand in hand).
If those are your sincere beliefs, I really would recommend you pick up a few books about recent German history. How Hitler came to power, how the state functioned once he was in power, how people tried to get rid of him but failed, and what it took to finally remove him. And then continue with the history of the GDR, how surveillance by the Stasi influenced everyday life, how people tried to reform the political system but failed, and what it took to finally reunite Germany.
The history of other countries might teach you similar things, but Germany is a good example because it is culturally a rather "western country", so it's easier to recognize similarities.