User blog comment:Semanticdrifter/Digital Protest Against the FISA Improvements Act/@comment-3459698-20140204223154

While I personally have no qualms with a bunch of be-suited Government types reading my browser history on the premise of national security or whatever (I expect they're professional enough not to judge me personally, and I doubt anything I do is of any interest to them anyway), I do agree that certain surveillance practices are unethical and should be changed.

The typical adage of "If you're not doing anything illegal, et cetera, et cetera..." evades the issue of how the surveillance conducted is a mistreatment of civil rights. The fact that information is being harvested and used with no overt notification or consent from the people being investigated suggests that it is not justifiable from a moral, constitutional or legal perspective. You must ask the question of why these systems of surveillance are hidden from the general public. If they really have our best interests at heart and weren't doing anything that we would disapprove of, then what reason do they have to be secretive about it?

It's not the invasion of traditional privacies that bothers me, but that it is done in such a suspicious way that suggests that there are oppressive motives at play here. An analogy: I wouldn't argue with a doctor who asked if he could check my butt for tumors, but if he crept into my bedroom at night and stuck his finger inside me while I was sleeping, it would be a different story.

Although "I don't have anything to hide", I would place far more confidence and trust in a system that was transparent and subject to public verification. Classification of information and non-disclosure of the processes and directives of intelligence agencies only enables the free abuse of power of those in control with no means to expose or regulate corruption. If holding a monopoly on personal data can be exploited as a means of control, as a tool to manipulate whoever the state identifies as 'problematic' or 'undesirable', then it should be a priority for our social democratic society to prevent that power being misused.

Regardless on where you stand on the Liberty vs. Security debate, there is no sensible reason to support a system that withholds information and is not subject to independent review. If they made it clear to everyone what information they were monitoring and what they use it for, and simply requested to be given access to our details instead of forcibly taking them on the sly, they would have a far better moral basis upon which to argue the necessities of national security, and in the end, far more public support and willing compliance with their authority.