The problem isn't intelligence gathering, it's how it's being done: illegally.

Spy breaks the law, to make his job (life) easier (at least in the short term).
The spies who know about it, make the mistake of letting it slide.
People being people, start losing respect for all spies when they find out.
With more spies feeling no respect, the rules start breaking down.
Loop.

Spies, police, any other grouping of humans you like, it works exactly the same.

Except we do know they are engaged in mass domestic surveillance, which is NOT what our intelligence services are supposed to be doing.

There's a word for people who claim to uphold the rule of law while breaking it: "hypocrites" (preferably also "felons", but good luck with that).

Anybody remember Traveller?

Tech Level 9: Commercial Biometrics. Sensor technologies used to identify medical problems become affordable for general commercial use and are integrated with biometric databases to provide instant identification of targets passing through an established sensor zone.

Tech Level 10: Remote Biometrics. Continued advancements allow the economical integration of multiple sensors (infrared, optical, terahertz, ultrasound, etc) into a compact unit small enough to be carried in the field.

Tech Level 11: Biometric Panopticon. Ubiquitous sensors linked in a global network provide instant and real-time identification and monitoring of entire populations (and their goods, pets, wildlife, etcetera).

Yeah, I've seen CCD cameras. I've also seen a couple of my customers upgrade to the new HD gear as their old VGA stuff finally dies. HD surveillance has come down a lot in price, and it will come down further, so I expect more will switch in future. And in another two or three decades, the next cycle will probably see people upgrading to 4K cams as those get cheap and their old HD gear fails, so... welcome to the panopticon.

Why would you need to be a racist to point at the 13th amendment? It doesn't forbid slavery, it monopolises it. The 13th says the government can enslave anyone convicted of a crime, and it's not a coincidence that the US has a ludicrously high incarceration rate and a for-profit prison industry.

Or, as another poster mentioned, launch your rock from the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter instead of from the Moon. For bonus points, use a near-solar trajectory for a gravity slingshot to give your rock a more antagonistic vector.

Two words: hyperspace bypass.

Longer version: That's a "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" reference. In other words, as much I hope you're right, your theory assumes that what an FTL-capable civilization wants can't involve (1) us being in the way somehow and (2) them not caring about what we want.

Hmm. What about a "tragedy of the commons" argument - what if Uber is "good enough" for enough of London that the Black Cab service won't have enough income to continue operating in the areas where Uber is "hopelessly inadequate"?

Stop and _think_ for a moment, will you? Nobody here is defending the Taliban. Nobody here is saying the CIA shouldn't fight the Taliban.

The whole bloody point of having a free country is not just having the ability to criticise our government when they do the wrong thing, but also that the ability be exercised. If we don't, history is pretty bloody clear that we end up with a government similar to the Taliban in charge of us.

If the CIA has a problem with carrying out its assigned tasks under the restrictions set upon it by the People, then its responsibility is to make that problem clear to the People and abide by their response. And if in an emergency it should decide that it is truly necessary to exceed those restrictions, it is equally necessary that it declare to the People what it has done and abide by their judgement.

To kill the leader of a terrorist group, the CIA hijacked and tainted the reputation of Western medicine, putting millions of lives at risk. Literally, millions. Preventable and treatable diseases kill and maim more people every day than groups like the Taliban could ever dream of - so in addition to the fallout on innocents, the CIA actually advanced the enemy's own goals.

And it did so by breaking the rules. In your own words, "Fuck that. They are responsible. They and their leaders bear the blame."

Er, actually? Yes, the CIA deciding to flout the rules is indeed the CIA's fault.

Otherwise, what's the point of fighting the Taliban, if not to protect the innocent and uphold the rule of law?

A person lays unmoving on the sidewalk. Hundreds see and yet walk past without stopping to help, each thinking "nobody else is doing anything, they must be okay."

What does "possible obedience situation" mean?

More accurately, replace 'clicking the Facebook "like" button' with 'having the Facebook "like" button'.

The javascript that displays the "like" button is on Facebook's servers, i.e. Facebook gets told which pages you visit on Hulu and could log that to assemble your Hulu browsing history. Do you trust Facebook not to do that?

For that matter, if I was an unscrupulous Three Letter Agency, I'd encourage "like" buttons everywhere and ensure I had a way to access Facebook's traffic. Who needs to tap the entire internet when you can tap the people doing it for you?

How many do you think would still take that 4% chance if the law was, "you get to decide, but if we later discover it was the wrong guy, you will be executed too"?

You're absolutely right. Proportional. He raped, tortured and murdered. So what is proportional to rape, tortured and murdered?

The question then becomes: do you want to be a good person with a clean conscience, or do you want to inflict a punishment proportional to rape, torture and murder?