User blog comment:Semanticdrifter/Digital Protest Against the FISA Improvements Act/@comment-5122856-20140224222235/@comment-24459455-20140226231354

"It needs to be regulated somehow. All countries are doing this. I just don't want to weaken our defenses making us easy prey."

Firstly, surveillance is not the same as security. They are not synonymous. You don't need surveillance to be safe from economic terrorism. Finances require regulations, controls, and fundamentally, security. Surveillance is a passive observer and relatively useless and is not a form of security (but it is a very dangerous tool of attack because of what it's capable of).

It's a weak point. It centralises information. It does not offer security, but creates a vulnerability. Their eyes are the eyes of any hacker who gets in. They are the very tools that a single hacker would need only minutes to cause chaos. Snowden caused a worldwide shift but he was benign.

A malignant attacker, on the other hand. All you need is one double-agent in the NSA database gathering the right information and... pop. Dirty secret here, a financial flaw there. Maybe the missing gold? Maybe a financial scandal the size of LIBOR? Or bigger? Who knows - well, the NSA does.

Why create security when dismantling it would be the most secure thing to do? No amount of security can prevent an opportunity, but if the opportunity is never there, no amount of invasion can reach it.