As much as is feasible, anyway. Not conducting mass surveillance on innocent people or spying on random people is quite simple.

That's what you've decided the purpose of government is. That's the status quo. But that doesn't make it right, and we should strive for something better.

You're comparing a phone companies with the government; that's ridiculous. The government has much more power to ruin people's lives and oppress its people. This has been demonstrated by the hundreds of millions of times that people were abused and/or murdered throughout history by governments. To say otherwise is to admit you're ignorant. But you've already done that when you compared the phone companies to the government.

Also, just because you hand your information to one company, doesn't mean you want to hand it to every single entity on the fucking planet. If you really believe that these organizations have some chance of blackmailing you, then handing the information out to even more people would increase those chances. I can't imagine that you're really this unintelligent, so I'll assume you're just a troll; it makes me feel better about humanity.

There should be laws against individuals in the phone company prying into information they shouldn't have (i.e. randomly looking at call data), too.

This policy violates the highest law of the land in the US, and people's individual rights. I don't know why you're comparing companies to governments, and I don't know why you're downplaying an issue that so many civil rights organizations are saying is dangerous. At any rate, I think you might want to read a bit of history to clear up your profound ignorance.

Yeah, but it sure is a lot easier for the government to oppress its targets when it can collect tons of their communications data, and potentially use it to destroy reputations, harass people based on misinterpretations of the data, or prosecute them based on unjust laws they may have broken. It can even use the data to *find* targets.

Anyone who trusts the government with this is a god damn fool of the highest caliber.

That does not seem to be the case, as just about everyone is being spied on. They're simply sapping up tons of data.

The real threats to "the land of the free" are the people in the government who are traitors to the principles this country is supposed to aspire to.

That wouldn't work as well for a constitutional republic. You can't be that blatant until the country is almost a full-blown police state.

Oh... you're a partisan hack. I should've known.

That has yet to be determined.

Why is spying domestically immoral? If you say it is, then why is it arbitrarily moral just because the person happened to be born in a different country? It's not their fault, so I don't see why you don't see them as human beings with rights like everyone else. Privacy is a basic human need, and can be seen throughout our and every society to some extent, and to answer why it is immoral to spy on foreigners can be done by asking why it's immoral for the government to spy on people without a warrant domestically.

Unless, of course, your reasoning amounts to "It's legal, so it's okay."

That's not actually the definition of morality.

Bandwagon fallacy.

What does the "Left" have to do with anything, and why are you using such useless terms?

It's quite simple. We don't police the world, and we don't haphazardly spy on innocent people. It's the easiest thing ever, because all it requires is that we do basically nothing.

What selfish bullshit. This is what you believe should be the status quo, and is the status quo; I'll have nothing to do with it. I don't think respecting the privacy of foreigners by not spying on innocent people en masse is such a hard or bad thing to do.

The government's "duty" is whatever the people say it is. They could change their "duty" if we stood up and told them to.

And "duty" does not absolve people of their immoral acts. Everyone has rights, and I damn well expect my government to try to respect the rights of foreigners.

I'm confused as to how that's a reason. Untruthful videos or ones that don't tell the whole truth doesn't mean that filming the police is a bad thing. Using that logic, you couldn't film at all merely because there is always some chance of someone creating a shoddy video.

So that's not a legitimate reason at all, even if I were to think that any legitimate reasons existed at all.

Shilling? Shilling for who? People who want the government to respect people's individual liberties?

You think that collecting this data is any less exploitable, or any more constitutional? Even if we take them at their word and they don't actually look at the data (Foolish considering the hundreds of millions of people throughout history abused at the hands of governments - including the US government - that you people like to ignore.), collecting it is still a violation of people's rights.

No, it your interpretation of the constitution is irrelevant. The fact is, it's a violation of the spirit of the constitution, and the haphazardly foreign spying is a violation of basic morality.

And the search warrants were given out by the rubberstamping FISA court. They're not valid in any sense, and the data shouldn't have been collected at all. You were clearly trolling, though, but I respond as if you're not, because I know people like that truly exist.

Then you're anti-freedom. People should not be harassed merely because they could be committing some crime. If they have no reason to think you're committing a crime, you shouldn't be stopped. In the US, this practice blatantly violates the spirit of the constitution, but that doesn't seem to stop hypocritical morons who desire 'safety' more than the freedom they pretend to care about from supporting it anyway. So basically, they're opposed to the highest law of the land in the US and want the government to blatantly violate it, and they're opposed to the principles the US (or any free country, really) is supposed to stand for.

To provide more cover for those who are more likely to be oppressed. This "They probably won't oppress me, so it doesn't matter." mindset is nothing short of selfish.

Besides that, you can't really predict when the government will decide to come after you. I'm sure the people who made those Twitter bomb jokes didn't think the government would see it, take them seriously, and then harass them, but they did.

I'm saying that if we allow things like this to go on, we'll move farther and farther in that direction. There is a difference.

My real problem is that you keep downplaying the issue, and act as if it's nothing. To people who think the government should follow the highest law of the land and people care about privacy, it's a huge issue. It might not be the absolute worst case scenario, but that doesn't mean it's not a huge issue.

This level of outrage needs to be directed towards every single unconstitutional activity that we face today.

They could just as easily collect the actual data. Why is the metadata any more private? Furthermore, metadata *is just data*; it can't be anything else.

They shouldn't be collecting a damn thing. We kill people based on "metadata." Metadata could have been used against the founding fathers, and to find Paul Revere. This mass surveillance is a tool for oppression, and nothing more. Metadata matters.

So while they're supposedly not listening in on everyone's calls, what they're doing is just as evil.

Nope. The mere collection of this so-called "metadata" is a violation of the constitution and people's individual rights. That's where it gets sticky.

It's one of the biggest issues we face today. As I said, any police state would love to have these capabilities, and this just moves us significantly further in that direction.

You've finally revealed your true colors: Someone who doesn't understand the constitution, or care about it. Read the fourth amendment. It doesn't take a genius to realize the NSA's activities are a blatant violation of the spirit of the constitution, which is something we refer to time and time again as times change.

If you say, "Well, the constitution doesn't explicitly mention it!" then you've missed the entire point of the constitution, and the principles of this country. It definitely doesn't give the government the power to spy on nearly everyone's communications.

No, you get a grip. You're setting up all these false dichotomies and pretending as if we have to ignore blatant violations of the constitution and our freedoms simply because you think that the mass violation of the highest law in the US and our individual liberties is no big deal, and that there are bigger things that are happening.

Multiple times now you've tried to downplay this significant issue, and at the same time, you pretend that you want to live in a free country. It does not seem that way.