"the oversight/limits you're protected by could disappear some day, they're imaginary and socially constructed."

This is the straw man of all straw mans.

You could have a Totalitarian Overlord someday, after all it's all 'socially constructed'. You'd have a million other, worse problems on your hands.

That your making that argument and can't provide examples of specific harm despite widespread powers of the state is problematic.

Creeping authoritarianism is a general problem, not an NSA problem.

Hey look I'm really trying to engage earnestly here. I did provide specific examples, but they were in the wiki article I linked and you didn't look at them (which is fair, no one likes being tossed a link like that). Let me summarize COINTELPRO:

# Covert & 'illegal' projects by FBI aimed at infiltrating, influencing, disrupting, and discrediting various political organizations

# Existence of the program was discovered after activists stole documents from an FBI office and leaked them to media

# Targets included: antiwar activists, feminist organizations, civil rights activists (ie MLK), environmentalists, animal rights activists, communist party, KKK, American Indian activists, far right groups

# Methods included:

* Breaking into homes, violent beatings, vandalism

* Assassination

* Smear campaigns

* Fabricating evidence, false testimony (leading to wrongful imprisonment and activist intimidation)

* Fabricating letters to discredit/humiliate people or erode their relationships, or cause conflict (leading to death in many cases)

I don't actually need to talk about hypotheticals, the US government has already abused these things to squish people or ideas it didn't like. The point about creeping authoritarianism is a secondary argument. My point is that sometimes it's better for certain tools/institutions not to exist at all.

I think we ought to treat surveillance technologies with the same type of reverence we treat nuclear tech (though maybe not to the same magnitude). Nuclear technology isn't intrinsically a bad thing: the problem is that, combined with human tendencies (tribalism, territorialism, etc), a conflict that previously would've resulted in a mere x deaths could now result in x^y deaths, or even total annihilation.

You agree that creeping authoritarianism is a general problem. Do you think it might just be in the nature of human societies? If so, wouldn't it be prudent to carefully consider what tools and institutions we leave lying around, in case the worst happens? We all accept this with nukes - there was some kind of effort at nuclear disarmament (though not enough). We should do the same for surveillance.

I'm only trying to convince you that we need to be very cautious, skeptical, and distrustful of things like the NSA, because the US govt cannot be trusted with it now, and it might get even worse in the future. What hypothetical evidence would someone have to show you, to change your mind?

While I might have been in some ways sympathetic, the Panthers were a violent, armed, (Marxist-Lenninist) Communist radical group that had ambitions to overthrow some parts of governance, they got into shootouts with and killed police officers, voter indimidation etc..

You do understand it'd be very appropriate for the FBI to infiltrate such groups, as they indicating they are currently doing now with 'far right' and other radical groups, especially those with wepaons.

Your characterization of 'assasination' is problematic. I wouldn't say Fred Hampton was so much assassinated. He and his buddies were involved in a shooting which killed police, very shortly thereafter the cops planned the raid to arrest them and two Panthers were killed. It seems that Fred was killed in cold blood. While this is obviously 'very illegal' - this is not the US Justice Department targetting someone, this is local Chicago/Oakland cops form of extra-judicial retribution for the gang killing of their colleagues. Again, not right, but something totally different what might be implied from 'assassination'. They killed cops, the cops got out of line and got revenge.

Very notably - these acts caused national attention and there was an enormous reaction. Information was made public, there was public and political furor, transparency etc..

All of this is some time ago, when central oversight was harder, when the violence was much higher, and where groups of various kinds (aka local cops, local Panther groups) would act independently from central control.

And in the grand scheme of 300 Million poeple, it's relatively small stuff.

Also, it's a good reason for not having a single power like J Edgar Hoover in charge of anything.

Finally, it should be noted that this was the start of the cold war, and the Soviets were absolutely funding totalitarian uprising around the world. Stalin direclty controlled 17% of the Bundestag during the Weimar. While obvoiusly not sufficient to cause 'The Big Bad Man' to rise, without it, 'The Big Bad Man' likely would have never existed. Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua ... so much of the world ... was perturbed by very real, direct intervention from Soviet backed 'Marxist-Lenninist' groups. The 'Red Scare' was not a fantasty. It might have been overstated on some level, but it was a material 'existential' problem.

The same, continued tactics by Russians have landed us in an 'almost war' for the West in Ukraine today. Russian spies are all over Germany, Putin has corrupted so many people in Europe including literally former German Chancellors, Austrian, Hungarian leaders - the FBI exists so that this does not happen so brazenly in the the US and allied nations.

The FBI will step out of line again, just like all groups do, and there should be constant vigilance, but given the total independence of other branches, I'm not worried at all. There will always be whistleblowers, eventual transparency etc..