User blog comment:Semanticdrifter/Digital Protest Against the FISA Improvements Act/@comment-24459455-20140205163109

The retort to the common but cliched 'defence' of "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is to ask, why then, was the NSA hiding all of this from us in the first place?

It reeks obstensibly of hypocrisy to have a highly secretive organisation to accuse others with an appeal-to-unproven-guilt fallacy about 'hiding' things (do you have any evidence of my wrongdoing, officer? Or does 'innocent until proven guilty' go out the window?) that they do not even know exists.

Searching all areas is an inefficient waste of resources, assumes the searchers are not above abuse and blackmail (which we can see evidenced in many cases, especially this secretive lack of transparency) and would not stoop to using embarassing (personal online life habits, anyone?) but not illegal activities to guilt-trip, blackmail and manipulate individuals, potentially even politicians and high-ranking officials, into complying with corrupt demands.

No, we have nothing to hide (why do I have to justify myself to you? Do you have proof of a crime?), but you clearly do. There's no evidence of any sort of productivity or prevention from the searches, so why do they have such a large budget? What is their real purpose if they fail to prevent any sort of crime? What evidence is there of actual effectiveness?

NSA, if you have nothing to hide from the public, then you have nothing to fear.