It's a point I don't agree with. The scope grows and shrinks. Up to 10 years ago, there were parts of this country where two men having gay sex (or indeed, any two people having the 'wrong' kind of sex) were committing a criminal offense. This only became legal because a man who was arrested in Texas in 1998 for doing so in his own home appealed the case up to the Supreme Court (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas#Arrest_of_Law...).
As of 2013, the Federal government is required to recognize gay marriage and no adults engaged in consensual sexual relations can be hit with criminal charges in the US. That's a significant shrinkage in the scope of state power.
It's a two way street. Just as the notion that government is always benign or correct (a subset of the just world fallacy) is flawed, so is the libertarian trope that government is always oppressive and encroaching (a subset of the mean world fallacy). In the context of this conversation, I agree that the NSA's reach is overbroad, which is worrying because of the potential for government blackmail or overprosecution; but on the other hand I note that things you could have been blackmailed with or prosecuted for up to quite recently - and which had been considered serious crimes going back to ancient times - are no longer criminal, which is an enormous step forward for individual freedom.
They sure scope creeped with the CFAA, though. Downloading too many PDFs is a felony. Changing your user agent is a felony.
And then against the First; sharing links to websites that stream videos is a crime once we get you extradited here. Writing a tasteless joke online is a felony that warrants half a million for bail. Sharing a link to documents we don't want you to see is a felony.
Maybe they're not always oppressive. But it's reasonable for us to assume the possibility of scope creep. And it's reasonable to not want them to have all our communications stored against the event.
As of 2013, the Federal government is required to recognize gay marriage and no adults engaged in consensual sexual relations can be hit with criminal charges in the US. That's a significant shrinkage in the scope of state power.
It's a two way street. Just as the notion that government is always benign or correct (a subset of the just world fallacy) is flawed, so is the libertarian trope that government is always oppressive and encroaching (a subset of the mean world fallacy). In the context of this conversation, I agree that the NSA's reach is overbroad, which is worrying because of the potential for government blackmail or overprosecution; but on the other hand I note that things you could have been blackmailed with or prosecuted for up to quite recently - and which had been considered serious crimes going back to ancient times - are no longer criminal, which is an enormous step forward for individual freedom.